Vincent Campbell (Auth.) - Science, Entertainment and Television Documentary (2016, Palgrave Macmillan UK) PDF

Science, Entertainment and
Television Documentary
Vincent Campbell
Science, Entertainment and Television
Documentary
Vincent Campbell
Science,
Entertainment and
Television
Documentary
Vincent Campbell
Leicester University of Leicester
Leicestershire
United Kingdom
ISBN 978-1-137-38537-6 ISBN 978-1-137-38538-3 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-38538-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016935294
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have many people to thank for contributing to this book, including the
range of people from a variety of different disciplines who made useful
comments and suggestions to me when I presented early ideas from this
book. This includes participants at conferences of MeCCSA, the ISSEI,
International Science in Society, ASLE-UKI, BAFTSS and Cosmographies.
Amongst others, I would particularly like to thank Vian Bakir, Helen
Hughes and Anna Claydon not only for their comments on the early ver-
sions of this work, but also for providing opportunities to present some
of my ideas. I would also like to thank the University of Leicester Study
Leave Scheme which enabled me to get this book underway, and for the
staff at Palgrave for their support and guidance. I would like to thank my
family—my father Alan, my niece Rhiannon and my mother- and father-
in-law Braith and Stephen—for their support. Finally, I would like to
particularly thank my darling wife, Penelope, for her unwavering encour-
agement, support and patience during the writing of this book.
v
CONTENTS
1 Introduction: The Changing Landscape of

Television Science 1
The ‘Rotting Carcass of Science TV’? 1
A Brief History of Science Documentary on Television 3
The Aims and Structure of the Book 15
References 21
2 Analytical Frameworks: Science, Documentary and Factual

Entertainment 27
Introduction 27
Science and Documentary: Discourses of Sobriety? 28
Impossible Pictures: CGI and Subjunctive Documentary 36
Animation and Documentary 38
Conclusion: From the Subjunctive to the Sublime? 51
References 60
3 Space Sciences: Wonders of the Cosmos 63

Introduction 63
Visualising Space: Diffraction Spikes, Lens Flares and
Candy Apple Neon 67
The Magisterial Gaze and the Grand Tour 74
Technological Sublime: Scientists, Probes and Robots 80
Conclusion: Imagining Aliens in the Subjunctive Sublime 87
References 92
vii
viii CONTENTS
4 Palaeontology: Monsters from Lost Worlds 95

Introduction 95
Extinct Animal Shows: Categories and Criticisms 99
Palaeoimagery Frames: From the Subjunctive to the Sublime? 113
Conclusion: From Extinct Animals to Human Prehistory 120
References 122
5 Archaeology: Ancient Secrets and Treasures 125

Introduction 125
The Archaeological Gaze and Subjunctive Documentary 131
Reenactments and the Dynamic Sublime 144
Conclusion: Bringing Out the Dead 148
References 152
6 Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Extreme Weather

and Natural Disasters 155
Introduction 155
Weather Porn 159
People and Politics: Experts and Eyewitnesses 169
Agency and Risk 174
Conclusion: ‘Natural’ Disasters and the Apocalyptic Sublime 178
References 182
7 Pseudoscience and Popular Beliefs 185

Introduction 185
Pseudoscience and Popular Beliefs 191
The Trappings and Rhetoric of Science 194
Encounters of the Subjunctive Kind 197
Chasing Aliens, Hunting Ghosts and Questing for Monsters 205
Conclusion: Resurrecting the ‘Corpse’ of Science Television? 212
References 213
Bibliography 217
Index 219
LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 1.1 Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (Adrian Malone,

KCET/BBC, 1980) 15
Fig. 2.1 Crime 360 (Craig Santy, A&E, 2008) 58
Fig. 3.1 Cosmos A Spacetime Odyssey (Brannon Braga, Fox, 2014) 78
Fig. 4.1 Flying Monsters (Matthew Dyas, Sky, 2011) 106
Fig. 5.1 Egypt’s Lost Cities (Harvey Lilley, BBC, 2011) 135
Fig. 6.1 Life After People (David De Vries, History Channel, 2008) 167
Fig. 7.1 Ghost Adventures (Izzy and Jenny Acevedo,
Travel Channel, 2009) 208
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The Changing Landscape

of Television Science
THE ‘ROTTING CARCASS OF SCIENCE TV’?

At the beginning of 2015, Rich Ross, the new president of Discovery,
one of the leading global producers of factual television of the last 30
years or so, responded to concerns about the direction the channel, and
factual television more generally, has taken over the last few years (Walker
2015). The channel had recently come under criticism for a natural his-
tory programme entitled Eaten Alive (2014) which was promoted on
the claim that its presenter, in a specially designed suit so he would sur-
vive, would allow himself to be swallowed by a giant snake. Although the
programme didn’t quite deliver on this claim, criticism was widespread,
not just because of the specifics of this programme’s apparent quest for
sensationalism over animal welfare and biological science but because it
was seen as representative of a particular attitude within contemporary
factual channels (Palmer and Lawrence 2014). A persistent criticism in
recent years has been that factual channels have moved ever further away
from the serious presentation of science documentary, in favour of a shift
towards factual entertainment, hybrid formats of programme that com-
bine elements of documentary with elements from other genres, including
game shows and soap operas, and programmes dominated by dramatised
reenactments, visual effects and computer-generated imagery (CGI)
(Brunsdon et al. 2001; Kilborn 2003; Beattie 2004; Campbell 2009; Beck
et al. 2012). Despite Ross’ assertions that such programmes may have run
their course (Walker 2015), the predominance of these formats across a
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

V. Campbell, Science, Entertainment and Television Documentary,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-38538-3_1
2 V. CAMPBELL
range of factual channels has generated criticism for some time. Scientist
David Schiffman argued for instance:
It’s not just Discovery. If you turn on the History Channel, there’s a good
chance it’ll be a show about aliens helping Hitler. The Learning Channel
shows Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. It suggests there’s nothing real that peo-
ple care about enough to watch, and that’s just not true. Look at the success
of Blue Planet and Planet Earth; they’re some of the most highly viewed
nature documentaries in history and there’s no people in them, just amaz-
ing animals doing cool things. It’s not hard to get it right and also make it
entertaining—the BBC does it all the time. (in Walker 2015)
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo (2012–2014) was a controversial docu-soap

focused around the family of a toddler pageant show performer, shown on
TLC (originally The Learning Channel), and cancelled after it emerged
the girl’s mother was involved with a convicted sex offender. Far from
unusual in US factual channel output in the 2010s, criticism of such pro-
grammes often takes this approach of comparing them to the output of
the global leader in public service factual programming, the BBC. This
is despite similar concerns over the shift in British television from docu-
mentary to factual entertainment having emerged as well (Kilborn 2003;
Byrne 2007), and concerns that pressures for audience-grabbing imagery
have generated controversy over factual production practices even at the
BBC (Singh 2011).
Another key criticism of the rise of factual entertainment has been
the propensity for a shift not only in presenting scientific topics in ever
more entertainment-oriented formats but in how factual producers have
increasingly devoted resources and schedule space to pseudoscience and
outright fiction. Referring in particular to the prevalence of programmes
about ghosts on factual channels, for instance, Hale asserts:
The viewer who is so inclined can spend the day in a certain band of the
cable- television spectrum, switching from a paranormal show on A&E to
a documentary about Hitler on the History Channel to a killer-asteroid
report on Discovery to a talk show on Fox News, in a feedback loop that will
reinforce any number of received notions about history, fate, conspiracy, the
ruling caste and how the world is going to hell in a handbasket. (2009: 26)
Further controversies have emerged surrounding archaeology pro-

grammes based on, at best, questionable evidence (Evans 2012), and mock
INTRODUCTION: THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF TELEVISION SCIENCE 3
documentaries not sufficiently signalled as such, notably the Animal Planet

Mermaids (2012) programmes which one critic described as illustrating the
‘rotting carcass of science TV’ (Switek 2012). The nature of contemporary
science documentary and factual entertainment television in this context of
perceptions of dramatic decline and decay is the focus of this book. Before
explaining the aims, approach taken and structure of the book, it is impor-
tant to trace out some of the key stages in the development of science
documentary on television and to identify, in particular, the emergence and
characteristics of contemporary factual entertainment.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SCIENCE DOCUMENTARY

ON TELEVISION
The historical development of science in film and television documentary

has been rather neglected until relatively recently (Boon 2008; LaFollette
2013), rather surprising given the long history of the relationship between
science and film. Science documentary does not, of course, begin with the
origins of television; indeed in one historical account of the evolution of
scientific films it is suggested that television science documentaries are
in some senses a ‘conclusion of long historical processes’ (Boon 2008: 2,
original emphasis) as many of the structures, styles and tropes of science
documentary were developed prior to the television era. An in-depth dis-
cussion of that historical development is not possible here, but it is impor-
tant to mark out some of the key features that take science documentary
from the early days of film through to the modern era of multi-platform
factual entertainment.
The emergence of cinematography was heavily contextualised by notions
of possible scientific applications, as evidenced by Eadweard Muybridge’s
experiments with photography that captured horses in motion amongst
other things, and the same was true of early photography in relation to
astronomy (see Chaps. 2 and 3). Soon after the Lumière brothers’ first
films were shown in 1895, a number of scientists, especially medical scien-
tists, started using film as a tool for research and education (Boon 2008:
8). Some sciences featured regularly in early films, from newsreels cap-
turing Howard Carter’s excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb in the early
1920s to popular science-themed film series such as Secrets of Nature
(1922–1933) which utilised techniques such as micro-cinematography
and time-lapse footage to show the cells and movements of plants (Boon
4 V. CAMPBELL
2008: 29). In the 1920s and 1930s the term ‘documentary’ emerged, and
again aspects of scientific disciplines were apparent, such as the ethno-
graphic approach of Flaherty’s seminal Nanook of the North (1922). The
1930s saw many early documentaries commissioned by corporations and
government bodies, such as Paul Rotha’s Contact (1933) for Imperial
Airways and the films produced by John Grierson for the British Empire
Marketing Board and then the General Post Office, all themed around the
promotion of ‘technological modernity’ (Boon 2008: 36).
By the time television appeared then, the relationship between film
and science was already really quite sophisticated, and many of the tech-
niques that would later come to be typical of science documentary and
factual entertainment actually have their roots in techniques developed
in documentary and non-fiction films, for instance, the use of dramatised
sequences and animation. Early television technology, both in terms of
production (the predominant need for live content) and reception (the
small, nine-inch screens) initially limited the capacity of science documen-
tarians to innovate in terms of visual styles and forms. One consequence
of technological limitation in British science television, for instance, was
for a tendency to use close-ups on in-studio presenters, which further led
to embedding the stylistic trope of the science presenter as television per-
sonality into the television science format. As Boon notes ‘in the longer
term […] it was the personality issue—linked to factors of immediacy and
‘intimacy’—that became significant in non-fiction broadcasting’ (2008:
193). For example, the success of the popular early 1950s’ programme
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? (1952–1959), essentially a game show where
a panel of experts were presented with a previously unseen object and
made informed guesses as to its nature, made stars of participants Glyn
Daniel and Mortimer Wheeler. It’s worth noting how the rise of the
personality in television science wasn’t particularly related to the type of
broadcasting system in place, as it occurred in both the public service
context of the BBC in Britain and the fully commercial system of the
USA, where television in the 1940s and 1950s was seen by many scien-
tific organisations as means for publicity (and perhaps funding as a result)
(LaFollette 2013: 12). In the USA, scientists who braved early television
also achieved celebrity status, for instance, figures such as astronomer
Roy K. Marshall who hosted The Nature of Things (1948–1953) on NBC
(LaFollette 2013: 11). The importance of personality wasn’t intrinsically
linked to scientists, however. PR officer for the Johns Hopkins University,
Lynn Poole, for instance, became ‘an instant star’ when appearing on the
Johns Hopkins Science Review (1948–1995) (LaFollette 2013: 12). In

Britain, Patrick Moore, although only an amateur astronomer, became
a television celebrity through hosting the BBC magazine programme
The Sky at Night, beginning in 1957 and continuing until his death in
2012 (setting a record for presenting a continuing series in the process).
David Attenborough, on the other hand, though a Cambridge graduate
of natural sciences, began his career at the BBC in 1952 having barely
watched any television or given the nature of television much thought
(Attenborough 2002: 11). Initially a producer, of Animal, Vegetable,
Mineral? amongst other things, he finally appeared in front of the camera
in the series Zoo Quest in 1954 (which ran until 1963).
Whilst studio-based material was relatively primitive in some senses,
filmed material for science programmes was also produced in the 1950s;
moreover, as in the case of Zoo Quest, getting resources to make films for
broadcast in Britain wasn’t easy (Attenborough 2002: 34). Although expe-
rienced documentary filmmakers did work with the BBC—Paul Rotha,
for instance, was briefly Head of Documentaries between 1953 and 1955
(Boon 2008: 203)—it took time for filmed material to feature more fre-
quently as part of BBC output. Documentary film was still a viable and
prominent outlet in the 1950s, as shown by the award-winning successes
of the film of Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki (1950) expedition and The Silent
World (1956), which made Jacques Cousteau a star. Cousteau also worked
on television series in the 1950s, but didn’t shift fully to television until
The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau premiered in 1968 (LaFollette
2013: 90). Filmed science documentaries, aside from the appeal of loca-
tion footage, often involved the use of more sophisticated techniques than
were available on the ‘show and tell’ formats of studio-based television
programmes like Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? (see Boon 2008 for a discus-
sion). In the USA, where productions were financed in ways allowing sig-
nificant resources to be used for television films, famous Hollywood figures
became involved in the production of television science programmes. Walt
Disney, for instance, established the Disneyland ‘science factual’ (LaFollette
2002: 54) anthology series beginning in 1954 (running till 1990), com-
bining live-action sequences with animation in programmes about a variety
of science topics, including space exploration. Celebrated director Frank
Capra was involved in the production of four science films in the Bell
Television Series (1956–1962) that also had high production values and
complex combinations of techniques, including dramatised sequences, ani-
mation and poetically composed scripts around the expositional material
6 V. CAMPBELL
offered by scientists and presenters. Both the Disney and Bell programmes
were filmed in colour as well, and the commercial American broadcast-
ing environment notwithstanding, some of these films were made to be
screened in schools and treated as educational and informational tools, not
just as entertainment (LaFollette 2013: 51). A combination of techniques
thus developed in films and the experimentation of early television science
programme-makers laid the foundations for contemporary science televi-
sion. LaFollette argues that, in the US case at least:
Production approaches that are now standard practice on NOVA and the
Discovery Channel derive, in fact, from experimentation by television
pioneers like Lynn Poole and… such programs as… the Bell Telephone
System’s science specials. These early efforts were also influenced by televi-
sion’s love of the dramatic, refined during its first decade and continuing to
shape news and public affairs programming, as well as fiction and fantasy,
today. (2002: 35)
In Britain, science programming, particularly at the BBC, proved pivotal in

the organisation’s attempt to position and establish itself, both in the con-
text of successful commercial television from the mid-1950s onwards and
in terms of seeking a global televisual status, as evidenced by discussions
about the role of the BBC in the development of satellite technologies
(see Farry and Kirby 2012). For a range of reasons, British broadcasting
started to come into its own relative to the USA in the 1960s. In the USA
at that time, science documentaries tended to come more in the form
of specials, such as those produced by the National Geographic Society,
which embraced television in notable programmes like Miss Jane Goodall
and the Wild Chimpanzees in 1965 (LaFollette 2013: 89). Whilst there
had been early enthusiasm for television amongst some science institu-
tions in the 1940s and 1950s, by the 1960s some institutions like the
Smithsonian (LaFollette 2013: 90) and the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (ibid.: 94) were becoming remarkably reluctant
to engage with television, and commercial pressures for entertainment
programming began to squeeze science content to some extent. In Britain,
on the other hand, the emergence of the ‘comfortable duopoly’ (Williams
2010: 159) between the public service BBC and the commercial network
ITV led to a period of regular complementary scheduling of programming
such that the BBC and ITV didn’t try to compete for audiences, giving
factual programme-makers the potential to experiment with formats in the
relative safety of a small number of channels (two BBC channels from the
mid-1960s and one ITV channel, which remained the case up until the
launch of Channel 4 in 1982) and the potential for big audiences. It was in
this period that a number of long-running science shows were established
such as the magazine programme Tomorrow’s World (1965–2003) and the
science documentary strand Horizon (1964–) which inspired and has pro-
vided content for the American PBS series NOVA (1974–). Establishment
of the BBC Natural History Unit in 1957 had signalled an institutional
commitment to science at the BBC (Boon 2008: 234), and ITV also com-
mitted itself to producing science-based television series such as the long-
running natural history series Survival (1961–2001). This period also saw
the production of what are sometimes regarded as the high watermarks
of television documentary, in a number of high production value, multi-
episode special series focused on grand concepts, such as Kenneth Clark’s
Civilisation (1969), Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man (1973), a co-
production between the BBC and Time-Life (LaFollette 2013: 122), and
Attenborough’s Life on Earth (1979). Attenborough’s series was screened
in dozens of countries and ultimately reached hundreds of millions of
viewers, as did another transatlantic co-production (between the BBC and
PBS affiliate KCET) in 1980, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.
These works continue to represent the quality standard according to which
many science programme-makers today operate and are judged, particu-
larly Cosmos (as will be shown in Chap. 3). As an aside, it is striking given
the cultural resonance of Cosmos, and its resurrection in 2014 (see below),
that apart from a brief descriptive mention by Barnouw (1993: 316–317)
the series has been virtually ignored by the major scholars of documentary.
For instance, it is not mentioned by Nichols (1991, 2010), Renov (1993),
Corner (1996) or Winston (2008). One reason for this may be the grow-
ing perception over time that these kinds of documentaries, despite their
high production values, exotic locations and extended runs over multiple
episodes, are otherwise ‘highly conventional’ in offering the exposition of
an authoritative presenter in a manner seen by some as though audiences
are ‘being patronised’ (Kilborn 2003: 9). As the aesthetics of documentary
diversified in a number of different ways through the 1960s and 1970s,
attracting the critical scrutiny of documentary scholars, science docu-
mentaries seemed to stick to a rather staid model of comparatively dry
exposition of scientific knowledge. Although often still cited as markers
of quality television (for instance, Wheatley 2004), science documentaries
have definitely not received the level of critical attention from scholars as
8 V. CAMPBELL
have other kinds of documentaries. A trace of this sentiment is even evi-

dent from the time, albeit across the Atlantic. Attenborough recounts, for
instance, how initial offers for broadcasting Life on Earth in the USA pro-
posed cutting his presentation entirely, with a narration recorded instead
by a Hollywood actor like Robert Redford, though this option was per-
sonally rejected by Attenborough (Attenborough 2002: 293). The idea
of science documentaries as conservative, aloof, patriarchal and lacking in
both wide popular appeal (though Life on Earth was a success in the USA
too) and aesthetic interest has continued to persist, not least because of
changes in the broadcasting environment since the early 1980s.
The transformation of television since the 1980s has created some-
thing of a paradox for science documentary. On the one hand, the grad-
ual development of multi-channel television, through cable, satellite and
then digital, has seen a massive proliferation of potential space for science
programming compared to the days of two or three analogue channels.
Establishment of dedicated niche factual channels, such as the Discovery
Channel (1985), the History Channel (1995), Animal Planet (1996) and
the National Geographic Channel (in the UK in 1997 and in the USA
in 2001) amongst others, has presented new platforms for science pro-
gramming, providing spaces for new programmes and also giving archive
programmes an extended broadcast life through re-runs and syndication.
Factual programming can, depending on the subject matter and format,
be relatively cost-efficient to sell to international markets as well, widening
the potential reach for factual programme-makers still further (Steemers
2004). On the other hand, the fragmentation of television audiences across
multiple channels, with the potential for audiences to skip factual pro-
grammes altogether as they have gradually shifted from the major networks
to niche channels, has had significant consequences for the circumstances
of the production of factual television, with a particular shift towards an
‘entertainment orientation’ (Kilborn 2003: 9). It is at this time, particu-
larly in the 1990s, when factual entertainment as a label for programmes
distinct from conventional documentary begins to be used routinely in
both academic and industry discourses (Brunsdon et al. 2001; Kilborn
2003; Beattie 2004; Beck et al. 2012). The rise of factual entertainment
has several dimensions significant for modern science documentary, relat-
ing to economic, technological and aesthetic concerns.
Since the 1980s at least, international co-productions have increasingly
become the norm, with even otherwise well-funded public broadcasters
like the BBC routinely working with commercial companies to produce
their core factual content. The BBC began working with Discovery in
the mid 1990s (Chris 2002: 19), for instance, in a series of deals that lasted
until 2013 (Stelter 2013). These new players have brought their own
approaches to producing factual television (Chris 2002) impacting on
both subjects and styles of programme-making in public service pro-
ductions (Palfreman 2002). That trend looks set to continue with the
announcement in 2015 of a deal between the production team behind
some of Attenborough’s series and the online streaming television service
Netflix, as television enters the multi-platform phase (Sherwin 2015). The
practice of re-editing and re-voicing programmes, as was suggested for
Life on Earth, for example, has become a routine process for many factual
programmes being re-cut to suit different national markets and also for
different types of broadcasters. Although this may seem a relatively innoc-
uous and cost-effective behind-the-scenes production practice, it high-
lights how the imperatives of reaching global audiences can have subtle
yet ultimately significant impacts on programme formats and subjects. An
emphasis on the kinds of programmes that travel well internationally, that
don’t offer too much of either a parochial or political approach to topics,
is notable, with again an emphasis on entertainment more to the fore.
Programmes on subjects like outer space, dinosaurs, ancient civilisations,
wildlife and extreme weather, for instance, can be more readily repackaged
for audiences across international markets than programmes concerning
more specific socio-cultural and politico-economic topics (such as, say, the
pharmaceutical industry). Indeed, this book will show how, in many scien-
tific areas, political issues relating to the sciences being depicted are often
marginalised or omitted altogether in contemporary factual entertainment
and science documentary.
As well as changing economic imperatives, new technologies, particu-
larly improvements in portable recording equipment (Kilborn 2003: 19),
have opened up entirely new formats of programme, such as Cops (1989–)
which uses camera crews riding along with US police and filming their
investigations. As cameras have increasingly become part of emergency ser-
vices’ standard equipment, programmes created from footage collected by
car dashboard cameras, police helicopters and surveillance cameras have
also appeared, for example, series like World’s Wildest Police Videos (1998–
2001). Camcorders and most recently video-enabled mobile phones have
provided another source of content for factual television producers, par-
ticularly amateur footage of extreme weather and disaster events (discussed
further in Chap. 6). Technology also links to the idea that the era
10 V. CAMPBELL
of factual entertainment television is dominated by ‘the notion of perfor-

mance’ (Kilborn 2003: 13). For instance, camera-rig systems with small
remotely controlled cameras replacing intrusive camera crews have enabled
advances in the so-called ‘fly on the wall’ documentary-style programmes
that first appeared in the 1970s. As well as award-winning series such as
Educating Essex (2011) which used a camera-rig system to film inside a
British secondary school, these systems have been used for far more con-
trived entertainment formats, such as the iconic programmes associated
with reality TV Big Brother (seen first in the Netherlands, 1999–) and
Survivor (seen first in Sweden, 1997–) (for an overview of reality TV see
Beck et al. 2012). Concerns of overt game show formats from reality TV
impacting on documentary programmes have been seen in relation to pro-
grammes like the archaeology series Time Team (1994–2013) which bor-
rowed the “beat the clock” format of many reality TV makeover shows
(see Brunsdon et al. 2001 for a discussion of makeover shows). Another
successful attempt to combine science with reality TV was Rough Science
(2000–2005) which utilised a Survivor-style format of placing a group
of scientists in a remote location and setting them a number of scientific
challenges. Such programmes have arguably been the exception not the
rule, however, and the tensions between documentary and reality TV, such
as between performance and reality and documentary and entertainment
formats, have been raised by other programmes. The Crocodile Hunter
(1997–2004), for instance, took a very different approach to the patriar-
chal approach of Attenborough programmes. Hosted by a wildlife expert
and zoo owner, Steve Irwin, the programme was far more focused on Irwin
as a performer with his particular style involving getting into close proxim-
ity with wildlife, especially dangerous animals, which not only led to much
criticism but ultimately to his death in 2006 as a result of being stung in the
chest by a sting-ray whilst filming. Despite criticism from various profes-
sional quarters, Irwin’s programmes were globally popular, even leading to
him starring in a fiction film The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course (2002),
and his style of up-close natural history documentary has persisted with
other presenters and factual entertainment programmes (like Eaten Alive).
These tensions, however, are perhaps best exemplified by the rise of
the ‘docu-soap’ which is ‘essentially a hybridized format, combining cer-
tain structural and narrative features of soap-opera with elements of the
observation documentary’ (Kilborn 2003: 57). A craze for docu-soaps
was apparent on mainstream channels in the mid- to late 1990s (Kilborn
2003: 58), covering a variety of ordinary activities, from learning to drive
to working in airports, and regarded with quite a high level of disdain from
many, such as the playwright Anthony Neilson who suggested they repre-
sented the ‘nadir of human achievement’ (in Winston 2008: 268). Whilst
their prevalence on major channels may have died down somewhat, in the
context of specialist factual television channels the docu-soap has become
arguably the primary format. Adoption of docu-soap styles in science pro-
grammes was quite quick, with shows like Big Cat Diary (1996) following
big cats on the Masi Mara (Richards 2014) and other programmes focused
on historical reenactments (see Chap. 5). More recently, factual channels
have shifted ever more to a predominance of docu-soaps, arguably also
further away from conventional scientific topics and towards more dra-
matic, entertainment-focused subjects. Shows such as The Deadliest Catch
(2005–) about fishing vessels, Ice Road Truckers (2007–) about truck
drivers in Canada and Alaska, Ax Men (2008–) about loggers, Doomsday
Preppers (2012–) about survivalists preparing for impending doomsday
and many others (including those mentioned at the beginning of the chap-
ter) show this shift towards factual entertainment formats has not abated.
Whilst some of these features can be traced quite a long way back into
television and film history, such an emphasis on entertainment, perfor-
mance and generic hybridity, a final feature of the shift to factual enter-
tainment of central relevance to the concerns of this book, and arguably
much more clearly a symbol of the modern age of screen media, is the rise
of CGI in factual television programmes. Although CGI had been used
in television programmes on occasion before (including in the composit-
ing of images in Sagan’s Cosmos for instance), when the BBC produced
Walking with Dinosaurs in 1999 it represented a key moment in factual
television, in much the same way that its inspiration Jurassic Park did for
the use of CGI in fiction film in 1993. Although Walking with Dinosaurs
used actual location shooting, animatronics and puppet work as well, its
foregrounding of fully photorealistic CGI dinosaurs, within a format of
natural history programmes reminiscent of the likes of Life on Earth, rep-
resented a significant shift in the nature of factual television programmes.
A huge gamble for the BBC, the series was the most expensive factual
programme ever made but it paid off, achieving the biggest audiences for a
first-run factual programme, and went on to win multiple awards, essentially
generating an entirely new way of making programmes about palaeontology
(see Scott and White 2003; Campbell 2009; Chap. 4). CGI has increas-
ingly begun to feature in a variety of factual television programmes, for
instance, in historical programmes such as Virtual History: The Plot to Kill
12 V. CAMPBELL
Hitler (2004) which mixed archive footage with dramatised sequences

augmented by CGI to try and create a seamless narrative showing events
featuring Hitler, Churchill and other figures as if they had been captured
on film but which instead were entirely constructed. Again, the use of
CGI has generated anxieties and concerns amongst documentary scholars
about the impact on television documentary and a shift away from factual-
ity and documentary sobriety towards spectacular entertainment, and a
discussion of these concerns is a key theme of this book.
In 2014, a remake of Sagan’s Cosmos was produced, and a brief compar-
ison of the two series’ distribution gives a snapshot of just how the land-
scape of broadcasting has changed in that 30-year period and how these
concerns about the nature of modern-day factual entertainment science
programmes are perhaps more complicated and deserving of closer critical
scrutiny than the often highly pejorative and dismissive approach taken
by many commentators. The new series, partly funded and produced by
Seth Macfarlane, creator of comedy animation series Family Guy (1999–),
was presented by astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson and subtitled A
Spacetime Odyssey. Three features of the changes in the science documen-
tary environment between Sagan’s 1980 Cosmos and Tyson’s 2014 Cosmos
highlight the importance of looking at this distinctive area of science com-
munication, documentary and science in popular culture in more detail.
Sagan’s series had a total production budget in the region of $8 million,
a significant amount for the time, and when first broadcast in the US it
became the highest ever rated show of any kind in PBS history, a record
which lasted for a decade (Kiger 2014). Globally the series was screened
in over 60 countries to an estimated audience of some 500 million viewers
(Kiger 2014). It was also a co-production and reflecting what has become
commonplace, was edited and formatted differently for the American and
British markets and screened at significantly different times. At that time,
programmes produced in the USA were often screened in the UK many
months later (and vice versa). Cosmos’ global audience developed over
some years as the programme spread to different countries around the
globe. Successful television series were treated much like cinema releases,
heavily trailed and selectively scheduled as forms of ‘event’ television to try
and maximise ratings (important to both commercial and public service
broadcasters—for demonstrating value to advertisers for the former and
justification of costs to state paymasters for the latter). That exclusivity
of broadcasting, partly possible because of the small number of channels
ensuring proportionately large audience shares, arguably contributed to
the cultural prominence of the presenters of factual series produced at

this time (like Attenborough, for instance). Sagan, in particular, has been
cited as a formative influence on subsequent scientists’ careers in science.
Tyson’s series includes, in the opening episode, an account of Tyson meet-
ing Sagan as a teenager, before Cosmos aired but at a time when Sagan
was already a prominent public figure in the world of mediated science.
Cosmos and Sagan are also directly cited in the highly successful BBC space
science series Wonders of the Universe (2011) by its presenter, physicist
Brian Cox, as an inspiration in his choice of science as a career. Part of
that kind of impact, as much as it has to do with the eloquence and quality
of Sagan’s performance, rests on the specifics of the production environ-
ment at that time that gave such programmes the potential to become
memorable cultural and televisual events. This is all the more remarkable
from a current perspective given that, the accompanying book aside, the
transmitted episodes were pretty much all the audience had to go on. This
was a time when video recording was in its infancy and media companies
were viewing it as a threat to cinema and television audiences rather than,
as it turned out to be, another valuable stream of revenue.
Tyson’s Cosmos, on the other hand, has been produced in the vastly
changed landscape of international, multi-channel, multi-platform televi-
sion of the 2010s. One particularly illustrative difference lies in how the
new series was broadcast. Superficially, it retained some of the principles of
public service television. It premiered in primetime on Sunday nights on
Fox (the fourth “major” broadcaster, founded in 1986 and by the mid-
2000s often the most-watched American television network) but industry
commentators pointed to what was now a risk of showing a science pro-
gramme on a major network channel in primetime, science programmes
long since having largely moved to the factual channels (Jenkins 2014;
Kissel 2014). Instead of the precious exclusivity of programme content
seen in the 1980s, programmes today are broadcast in a radically differ-
ent manner. The ‘event’ television approach of the early 1980s can still be
used, but its returns are significantly lower in terms of audience figures.
The new Cosmos producers used a ‘uniformed scheduling’ approach in the
US market, where the show was simultaneously broadcast on Fox and nine
other channels (National Geographic Channel, FX, FXX, FXM, Fox Sports
1, Fox Sports 2, Nat Geo Wild, Nat Geo Mundo and Fox Life). This strat-
egy led to a claimed 45 million Americans watching at least some of the
series (Kissel 2014), with average audiences of around 3 million per episode
(Jenkins 2014). Maximising audience reach for the series then was based
14 V. CAMPBELL
not an exclusive event television programme but a widely available, cross-

channel offering. Internationally, the strategy was different, with National
Geographic International screening the series close behind the US broad-
casts, bringing the series to 125 countries, 135 million viewers and claiming
triple-digit increases in primetime/total day average audience numbers in
countries such as Argentina, Australia, Colombia, Croatia, Italy, Korea, the
Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the UK (Kissel 2014). For spe-
cialist international channels, having exclusive contents and brands remains
a key part of maintaining audience share, though that share is necessarily
treated in a very different manner—focused on niche competition rather
than the mass audience competition of the days of analogue television.
Aesthetically speaking, Sagan’s Cosmos built on the wide range of inno-
vative representational strategies developed over the history of film and
television science documentary, including being one of the first television
documentary series to use CGI in some of its sequences, as mentioned
earlier. The combination of live location footage, live studio footage and,
now famous, composited sequences of Sagan walking across a cosmologi-
cal calendar, depicting the life of the cosmos as if concentrated into a
single year with all of recorded human history taking place in the last
seconds of December 31 (see Fig. 1.1) made the series visually distinctive.
It also used an array of dramatised sequences, time-lapse and slow-motion
camera-work, microphotography from inside human cells, hand-drawn
animation, rostrum camera-work and a host of other visual effects, all
reflecting the substantial complexity possible in factual television content
by that time (and more evidence of the surprising marginalisation of the
series by all but a handful of documentary scholars (such as Metz 2006)).
Tyson’s series reproduced many of the visual tropes of Sagan’s, including
the calendar and the idea of a “ship of the imagination” in which the host
travels through space and time exploring a variety of scientific concepts,
discoveries and phenomena. Tyson’s programme also neatly links together
the trends of 21st century factual entertainment programmes, using CGI
extensively throughout in a variety of forms, with some of the techniques
of science programmes of the 1950s. Sagan’s series had used dramatic
reenactments of historical discoveries, although only his voice is heard
narrating the events being depicted by actors, whereas Tyson’s series
reconstructs historical sequences in a drawn animation style, very similar
in appearance to that used in Disneyland films about space in the 1950s,
and featuring a range of actors presenting the events being recounted.
Amidst the ‘rotting carcasses’ of other science programmes, Tyson’s series
Fig. 1.1 Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (Adrian Malone, KCET/BBC, 1980)
was also acclaimed and award-winning despite its use of many of the tech-
niques of factual entertainment. As well as illustrating the changes in con-
temporary science documentary, it also reinforces the need to investigate
and analyse how the techniques of factual entertainment intersect with
the traditions of science documentary on television more deeply than has
occurred in the past.
THE AIMS AND STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

Approaches to the study of science documentary television have tended
to take a number of different approaches. As indicated, historical stud-
ies have been relatively rare until recently, and they have tended to focus
either more on the historical precedents in science film that informed early
television science documentary (Boon 2008) or incorporated discussions
of documentary into wider historical accounts of science on television
(LaFollette 2013). Other work has centred on attempting to characterise
16 V. CAMPBELL
and discuss the narrative styles and forms of science documentary on tele-
vision, started with the key work of Roger Silverstone (1985, 1986) fol-
lowed by a few other works (for instance, León 1999) though these either
predate the rise to prominence of factual entertainment or have tended
to concentrate on traditional documentaries rather than incorporate fac-
tual entertainment into their analyses. In terms of how particular sciences
have been represented in documentary and factual entertainment, schol-
arly attention has again been relatively recent, with natural history and
wildlife films having received the greatest amount of attention (Mitman
1999; Bousé 2000; Chris 2006) and an emerging literature on environ-
mental documentaries as well (for instance Hughes 2014). More generally
though, science documentaries are incorporated into broader studies of
the mediation and communication of particular sciences, like archaeology
(Clack and Brittain 2007), or rather marginalised in studies more focused
on the representation of science in the news, such as studies of television
and the Space Race (Allen 2009) or the mediation of disasters (Pantti
et al. 2012). Again, such work tends to marginalise factual entertainment
even further, often omitting completely a consideration of factual enter-
tainment treatments of science despite these formats evidently becoming
predominant in the presentation of science on contemporary television.
This book aims to address that gap in the literature, by focusing on a
critical and analytical appraisal of the treatment of science in current fac-
tual entertainment and documentary television programmes’ coverage of
science. Building on a body of work which has started to develop strate-
gies for analysing factual entertainment television programmes on scien-
tific subjects (Campbell 2000, 2008, 2009, 2014a, b), the book expands
and develops that work further to offer a consideration of the treatment of
a range of different specific sciences within modern factual entertainment
and television documentary.
Concerned with the representation of sciences in the round, both within
and between particular sciences, this book appraises the representation of
science across a range of factual programme producers, concentrating on
those of the leading global producers in the English language, including
programmes from British broadcasters—like the BBC, ITV, Channel 4,
Channel 5, Sky, UKTV (so from channels like Yesterday and Really)—and
programmes from American producers, including the major networks and
a wide range of the factual networks’ output as well. Many of the pro-
grammes considered are co-productions between these organisations and
producers from other countries, with some having their origins outside
the UK/USA as well, though predominantly the versions considered are

those as broadcast in the UK or the USA. Concentrating on programmes
produced mainly in the 21st century, in the wake of the release of Walking
with Dinosaurs, the selection of programmes has been purposive rather
than systematic, with the primary goals being to ensure that a range of
programmes on particular sciences from across the dominant factual tele-
vision producers are included, collected through a combination of off-air
recordings, DVD releases and a variety of online services (including the
‘Box of Broadcasts’ tool, BBC iPlayer, and YouTube). This book is not an
attempt to offer any kind of quantitative analysis of the range and nature
of factual entertainment representations of science, measuring amounts
or proportions of such programmes across channels, networks or coun-
tries. Rather it is concerned with two key goals. First, it is concerned with
identifying any potential patterns in the use of factual entertainment and
documentary techniques, for instance in terms of the reproduction of
visual tropes and narrative structures, across programmes broadly grouped
together by their concentration on the same scientific topics. Second, it is
concerned with how such programmes construct and represent those top-
ics and arguably frame science as a result. The notion of frames frequently
crops up in studies of the mediation of science although it is generally
not used in a consistently operationalised manner from one author to the
next (Silverstone 1985; Button 2002; Sage 2008; Lakoff 2010; Weik von
Mossner 2011; Snider 2011). Unlike the typically highly systematic and
quantitative operationalisation of framing as a concept in news research
(stemming from work by Entman 1993), the use of frames as a concept
in many of these studies of science communication is more qualitative,
working across a range of often quite different types of texts to provide
‘an interpretative account of media texts linking up frames with broader
cultural elements’ (Matthes and Kohring 2008: 259). For texts like doc-
umentaries and factual entertainment programmes, analysis can usefully
focus on ‘generic frames’ (Callaghan and Schnell 2005: 5), that is, consis-
tent structural features and ‘narrative devices’ (ibid.: 5) within particular
genres, allowing for a consideration of the relationship between docu-
mentary and other genres as displayed in hybrid factual entertainment for-
mats. Moreover, it is also possible to explore these programmes in terms
of deeper ‘culturally embedded frames’ (van Gorp 2010: 85), in other
words ‘common cultural themes’ (ibid.: 86) that may be present alongside
the generic influences on current science television programmes (such as
cultural traditions in the representations of history, space, nature and so
18 V. CAMPBELL
on). Previous attempts to apply this approach to factual entertainment

television have indicated this is a fruitful way of investigating its treatment
of science (Campbell 2009, 2014b).
In order to underpin the consideration of factual entertainment and
documentary treatments of particular sciences, Chap. 2 explores in detail
the conceptual framework used in the discussion and analysis of the fac-
tual entertainment formats and techniques examined. It begins with a con-
sideration of the relationship between science and documentary, centred
on documentary’s claims to the real that in part relate to its association
with science in terms of both processes and principles. Discussion begins in
terms of the intrinsic difficulties in seeing documentary itself as scientific.
The chapter then centres on how the use of CGI in particular appears to
raise questions about the nature of documentary claims to the real. In order
to focus the widespread anxieties and pejorative perspectives on the rise of
factual entertainment outlined above into a viable analytical framework, it
initially concentrates on Wolf’s notion of digital animation in documentary
amounting to the emergence of ‘subjunctive documentary’, where CGI
enables programmes to depict ‘what could be, would be, or might have been’
(Wolf 1999: 274, original emphasis). From that starting point the chapter
develops a conceptual and analytical framework for the evaluation of the
uses of CGI (and other techniques) in contemporary science documenta-
ries and factual entertainment programmes. Building on a range of prior
work attempting to analyse the use of animation (both conventional and
digital) within the context of documentary, the chapter identifies a num-
ber of ways of critically evaluating the use of these techniques, that take
account of representational traditions not only within factual television and
documentary but also within particular sciences themselves, and the wider
representational traditions within popular culture that intersect to frame
sciences in particular ways. The chapter concludes by suggesting that when
these elements are taken into proper consideration, the complexities of the
relationships between science, entertainment and television documentary
are revealed. Moreover, it argues that it is possible to see in these interrela-
tionships a more complicated situation than in the simplistic assertions of a
continual decline into the spectacular, the specious and the subjunctive that
dominate discussions of factual entertainment treatments of science. It sets
up the idea that in at least some of the programmes and series considered,
the techniques of factual entertainment and contemporary documentary
converge with attempts to achieve one of the core goals of the public com-
munication of science, which is to generate not just public awareness and
understanding of science but also engagement with and enthusiasm for sci-
ence by constructing science as a subject of wonder, awe and the sublime.
Subsequent chapters then apply these conceptual and analytical frame-
works to a variety of specific scientific subject areas. Chapter 3 looks at the
space sciences, a much-neglected area in terms of considering documentary
and factual entertainment treatments, highlighting how the predominance
of CGI in contemporary programmes inflects not only traditions of the use
of visual effects and CGI in fiction films but also aesthetic decision-making
within the professional production processes of astronomical images for
public consumption (including long-standing uses of digital imaging in
astronomy). It argues that programmes on the space sciences frame space
within the perspective of the ‘astronomical sublime’ (Kessler 2012) as well
as employ the ‘technological sublime’ (Nye 1994) in their presentation of
the technologies illustrated. It also suggests that, at times, such programmes
effectively construct the technologies of CGI, in their ability to reconstruct
everything from subatomic particles to the Big Bang, as a particular form
of technological sublime referred to as the subjunctive sublime.
Chapter 4 moves from deep space to deep time, looking at palaeontol-
ogy as a particularly relevant subject given the significance of the success
of Walking with Dinosaurs to the prevalence of CGI in television docu-
mentary more generally. The chapter notes how that series’ success has led
to something of a dramatic shift in palaeontology programmes in the 21st
century towards the systematic use of CGI to re-animate extinct animals.
Whilst much of the focus of debate and criticism of such programmes
revolves around the credibility and veracity of computer-generated extinct
animals and the consequences for public perceptions of palaeontology,
the chapter explores how such programmes draw on conventions within
natural history documentary. It identifies clear consonances between
modern-day CGI representations of extinct animals and traditions in pal-
aeoimagery (the discipline of producing visual reconstructions of extinct
animals) stretching back to the early days of the science in the 19th cen-
tury. It argues that aspects of both the visual representation of extinct
animals and the narrative frameworks within which those representations
are offered are consistent with, and a continuation of, already existing
representational traditions and frameworks that exist within palaeontology
itself as well as within documentary and wider popular culture.
Chapter 5 moves from deep time to human history, focusing on archae-
ology. Previous studies of the mediation of archaeology have collectively
noticed how the themes and formats of archaeology as presented in
20 V. CAMPBELL
television documentary have been remarkably consistent from the earliest

days of television, providing dominant generic frames relating to quests
for lost civilisations, answers to mysteries and secrets, and the uncover-
ing of ancient treasures (for instance Kulik 2006). Interestingly, though,
it is arguably in archaeology programmes where some of the most overt
uses of the techniques of factual entertainment are seen within science
documentary more generally, and, in recent years, combinations of these
techniques and CGI in particular raise distinctive questions about the rela-
tionship between science and factual entertainment. The chapter shows
how new visual technologies used in archaeology increasingly overlap with
the use of CGI in documentary, again at times suggestive of a subjunctive
sublime, as digital imagery from tools like 3-D laser scanners becomes the
central focus of archaeology programmes, over and above archaeological
remains themselves, and are used to reconstruct not only objects, monu-
ments and cities, but also even to re-animate people. The complexities of
the mixing of factual entertainment techniques with scientific practices
are also explored through a discussion of how reality TV formats com-
bine with the role of historical re-enactment as a form of experimental
archaeology in a variety of investigative re-enactment programmes, where
a sense of the dynamic sublime arguably emerges focused on the affective,
experiential dimensions of historical re-enactment.
Chapter 6 also engages with ideas of a dynamic sublime and a focus
on experience, concentrating on a body of programmes covering extreme
weather and natural disasters. Occurring across a range of earth and atmo-
spheric sciences, as mentioned above, programmes on extreme weather
and natural disasters have been singled out in criticisms of factual entertain-
ment trends. Those criticisms, centred on the pejorative labelling of such
programmes as ‘weather porn’, are discussed in this chapter. It also notes
how the representations of disaster in such programmes are influenced by
a range of competing representational frameworks, including notions of
the authenticity of amateur footage for contemporary documentary claims
to the real and visual and narrative tropes stemming from disaster movies,
both of which offer visual and narrative framing centred on experiences
of disaster. The chapter suggests that many of the programmes considered
arguably do fall short of the expectations of disaster scientists in terms of
the way the causes and consequences of disaster, as well as responsibilities
for them, are represented. Instead, such programmes seem to be situated
in cultural rather than scientific frameworks for addressing disaster risk
and response, centred more on fatalistic beliefs in the judgement of God
or Nature and the construction of disasters as a vicarious spectacle within

the tradition of the apocalyptic sublime.
Chapter 7, the final chapter of the book, attempts to put the preced-
ing chapters and the debates about factual entertainment and subjunc-
tive documentary into a slightly wider context. As mentioned above, the
proliferation of channels and platforms for contemporary television pro-
grammes arguably compounds the difficulties for serious science documen-
tary to assume a prominent position clearly demarcated from other kinds
of programming. Alongside concerns about the uses of factual entertain-
ment techniques within science documentary are concerns about the pro-
liferation of factual entertainment programmes on pseudoscientific subjects
appearing on specialist factual channels. Some of these programmes are
categorised and labelled as entertainment rather than factual, but their
scheduling on factual channels and their visual and narrative techniques
show they regularly use the ‘trappings of science’ (Brewer 2012) and docu-
mentary as part of their persuasive claims. Exploring programmes on pseu-
doscientific subjects like ufology, cryptozoology and parapsychology, the
chapter argues that the ways in which they appropriate technologies—
particularly visual technologies—in attempts to construct persuasive narra-
tives present the real problem for contemporary television science. Unlike
those in previous chapters that are linked, however tenuously sometimes,
to real sciences, programmes that use the trappings of science and docu-
mentary to try and sustain pseudoscientific beliefs are arguably the real
subjunctive documentaries, or the real ‘rotting carcasses’ of factual televi-
sion. The chapter concludes that it is pseudoscience factual entertainment
programmes that provide the real challenges to both effective science com-
munication through factual television and the status and credibility of fac-
tual entertainment and television documentary.
REFERENCES
Allen, M. (2009). Live from the moon: Film, television and the space race. London:
I.B.Tauris.
Attenborough, D. (2002). Life on air: Memoirs of a broadcaster. London: BBC
Books.
Barnouw, E. (1993). Documentary: A history of the non-fiction film. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Beattie, K. (2004). Documentary screens: Non-fiction film and television.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
22 V. CAMPBELL
Beck, D., Hellmueller, L. C., & Aeschbacher, N. (2012). Factual entertainment

and reality TV. Communication Research Trends, 31(2), 4–27.
Boon, T. (2008). Films of fact: A history of science in documentary films and televi-
sion. London: Wallflower Press.
Bousé, D. (2000). Wildlife films. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Brewer, P. R. (2012). The trappings of science: Media messages, scientific author-
ity, and beliefs about paranormal investigators. Science Communication, 35(3),
311–333.
Brunsdon, C., Johnson, C., Moseley, R., & Wheatley, H. (2001). Factual enter-
tainment on British television: The Midlands TV Research Group’s “8–9
Project”. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 4(1), 29–62.
Button, G. V. (2002). Popular media reframing of man-made disasters: A caution-
ary tale. In S. M. Hoffman & A. Oliver-Smith (Eds.), Catastrophe & culture:
The anthropology of disaster. Santa Fe: SAR Press.
Byrne, C. (2007, September 8). Top film-makers rally to save BBC documentaries.
The Independent, p. 11.
Callaghan, K., & Schnell, F. (2005). Introduction: Framing political issues in
American politics. In K. Callaghan & F. Schnell (Eds.), Framing American
politics. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Campbell, V. (2000). “You either believe it or you don’t …”: Television documen-
tary and pseudo-science. In J. Izod & R. Kilborn (Eds.), From Grierson to the
Docu-soap. Luton: University of Luton Press.
Campbell, V. (2008, August). Environmental catastrophe risk as factual entertain-
ment television in Perfect Disasters. Conference paper, ISSEI language and the
scientific imagination, University of Helsinki. http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/optek/
issei/section4/Session_71_Bakir/71_Campbell.pdf
Campbell, V. (2009). The extinct animal show: The paleoimagery tradition
and computer generated imagery in factual television programmes. Public
Understanding of Science, 18(2), 199–213.
Campbell, V. (2014a). Analysing impossible pictures: Computer generated imag-
ery in science documentary and factual entertainment television. In D. Machin
(Ed.), Visual communication. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Campbell, V. (2014b). Framing environmental risks and natural disasters in factual
entertainment television. Environmental Communication, 8(1), 58–74.
Chris, C. (2002). All documentary, all the time? Discovery Communications Inc.
and trends in cable television. Television and New Media, 3(1), 7–28.
Chris, C. (2006). Watching wildlife. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Clack, J., & Brittain, M. (Eds.). (2007). Archaeology and the media. Walnut Creek:
Left Coast Press.
Corner, J. (1996). The art of record: A critical introduction to documentary.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Entman, R. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal
of Communication, 43(1), 51–58.
Evans, C. A. (2012, April 22). The so-called Jesus Discovery. Huffington Post. http://
www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-a-evans/the-socalled-jesus-discov_b_1425104.
html. Accessed 21 July 2015.
Farry, J., & Kirby, D. (2012). The Universe will be televised: Space, science, satel-
lites and British television production, 1946–1969. History and Technology,
28(3), 311–333.
Hale, M. (2009, December 13). Consigning reality to ghosts. New York Times,
p. AR26.
Hughes, H. (2014). Green documentary: Environmental documentary in the 21st
century. Bristol: Intellect.
Jenkins, N. (2014, June 9). After one brief season, cosmos makes its final voyage.
Time. http://time.com/2846928/cosmos-season-finale/. Accessed 28 July
2015.
Kessler, E. A. (2012). Picturing the cosmos: Hubble Space Telescope images and the
astronomical sublime. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Kiger, P. J. (2014, February 20). Carl Sagan and the Cosmos Legacy. National
Geographic Channel. http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/cosmos-a-
spacetime-odyssey/articles/carl-sagan-and-the-cosmos-legacy/. Accessed 28
July 2015.
Kilborn, R. (2003). Staging the real: Factual TV programming in the age of big
brother. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Kissel, R. (2014, July 7). Cosmos draws biggest global audience ever for National
Geographic Channel. Variety. http://variety.com/2014/tv/news/cosmos-draws-
biggest-global-audience-ever-for-national-geographic-channel-1201257111/.
Accessed 28 July 2015.
Kulik, K. (2006). Archaeology and British television. Public Archaeology, 5(1),
75–90.
LaFollette, M. C. (2002). A survey of science content in US television broadcast-
ing, 1940s through 1950s: The exploratory years. Science Communication,
24(1), 34–71.
LaFollette, M. C. (2013). Science on American television: A history. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G. (2010). Why it matters how we frame the environment. Environmental
Communication, 4(1), 70–81.
León, B. (1999). Science on television: The narrative of science documentary. Luton:
The Pantaneto Press.
Matthes, J., & Kohring, M. (2008). The content analysis of media frames: Toward
improving reliability and validity. Journal of Communication, 58, 258–279.
Metz, W. (2006). Atomic animals: Towards the re-invention of natural history and
science filmmaking. IM: Interactive Media e-Journal, 2. http://imjournal.
murdoch.edu.au/im-issue-2-2006/. Accessed 24 July 2015.
Mitman, G. (1999). Reel nature: America’s romance with wildlife on film.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
24 V. CAMPBELL
Nichols, B. (1991). Representing reality: Issues and concepts in documentary.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Nichols, B. (2010). Introduction to documentary (2nd ed.). Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Nye, D. E. (1994). American technological sublime. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Palfreman, J. (2002). Bringing science to a television audience. Nieman Reports,
56(3), 32–34.
Palmer, C., & Lawrence, S. (2014, December 9). Nature television is running
wild. The man-eating anaconda is just the latest atrocity. The Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/09/
nature-television-is-running-wild-the-man-eating-anaconda-is-just-the-latest-
atrocity/?tid=sm_fb. Accessed 28 July 2015.
Pantti, M., Wahl-Jorgensen, K., & Cottle, S. (2012). Disasters and the media.
Oxford: Peter Lang.
Renov, M. (Ed.). (1993). Theorizing documentary. London: Routledge.
Richards, M. (2014). The wildlife docusoap: A new ethical practice for wildlife
documentary? Television and New Media, 15(4), 321–335.
Sage, D. (2008). Framing space: A popular geopolitics of American Manifest
Destiny in outer space. Geopolitics, 13(1), 27–53.
Scott, K. D., & White, A. M. (2003). Unnatural history? Deconstructing the
walking with dinosaurs phenomenon. Media, Culture and Society, 25(3),
315–332.
Sherwin, A. (2015, May 2). Tussle of the big beasts: David Attenborough’s team
behind The Blue Planet and Planet Earth sign a deal with Netflix. The
Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tussle-
of-the-big-beasts-david-attenboroughs-team-behind-the-blue-planet-and-
planet-earth-sign-a-deal-with-netflix-10221596.html. Accessed 28 July 2015.
Silverstone, R. (1985). Framing science: The making of a BBC documentary.
London: BFI.
Silverstone, R. (1986). The agnostic narratives of television science. In J. Corner
(Ed.), Documentary and the mass media. London: Edward Arnold.
Singh, A. (2011, December 12). Frozen Planet: BBC “faked” polar bear birth. Daily
Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8950070/
Frozen-Planet-BBC-faked-polar-bear-birth.html. Accessed 22 Aug 2012.
Snider, E. (2011). The eye of Hubble: Framing astronomical images. Frame:
A Journal of Visual and Material Culture, 1(1), 3–21.
Steemers, J. (2004). Selling television: British television in the global marketplace.
London: BFI.
Stelter, B. (2013, October 11). BBC and discovery cut back on collaborations.
New York Times, p. C2.
Switek, B. (2012, July 31). Mermaids embodies the rotting carcass of science TV.
Wired. http://www.wired.com/2012/05/mermaids-embodies-the-rotting-
carcass-of-science-tv/. Accessed 28 July 2015.
Van Gorp, B. (2010). Strategies to take subjectivity out of framing analysis.
In P. D’Angelo & J. Kuypers (Eds.), Doing news framing analysis: Empirical
and theoretical perspectives. London: Routledge.
Walker, T. (2015, January 16). Eaten alive: Can the discovery channel recover from
a series of fear-mongering shows? The Independent. http://www.independent.
co.uk/news/world/americas/eaten-alive-can-the-discovery-channel-recover-
from-a-series-of-fearmongering-shows-9984457.html. Accessed 28 July 2015.
Weik von Mossner, A. (2011). Reframing Katrina: The color of disaster in Spike
Lee’s When the Levees Broke. Environmental Communication, 5(2), 146–165.
Wheatley, H. (2004). The limits of television?: Natural history programming and
the transformation of public service broadcasting. European Journal of Cultural
Studies, 7(3), 325–339.
Williams, K. (2010). Get me a murder a day: A history of media and communica-
tion in Britain (2nd ed.). London: Bloomsbury.
Winston, B. (2008). Claiming the real II: Documentary: Grierson and beyond.
London: British Film Institute.
Wolf, M. J. P. (1999). Subjunctive documentary: Computer imaging and simula-
tion. In J. M. Gaines & M. Renov (Eds.), Collecting visible evidence. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
CHAPTER 2
Analytical Frameworks: Science,

Documentary and Factual Entertainment
INTRODUCTION
The prominence and diversity of science in television documentary
throughout television history, as outlined in Chap. 1, demonstrate the
importance of and need for critical and analytical attention to science doc-
umentary. In this chapter, the goal is to unpack a range of critical and ana-
lytical responses to science documentary, particularly focusing on recent
debates and concerns relating to trends in factual entertainment treat-
ment of scientific topics. The chapter begins with a consideration of claims
closely associating the goals and approaches of documentary with those
of science, discussing the basis of these claims, and highlighting tensions
between science and documentary emerging from the development of
documentary conventions, and illustrated by a consideration of critiques
of the natural history film. Having established questions surrounding the
competing narratives of science and documentary, the chapter goes on to
highlight concerns about emerging trends in contemporary documentary
and factual entertainment, and how those trends problematise documen-
tary claims both to the real and to the scientific, with a particular focus on
the rise of CGI as a tool of documentary and factual entertainment today.
An overview of much of this analytical material reveals a persistent pejo-
rative and critical perspective on CGI and other trends in science docu-
mentary, and the chapter attempts to broaden and enhance the analytical
approaches utilised, especially with regard to the use of CGI. It argues
that a more nuanced consideration of the uses of factual entertainment

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-38538-3_2
28 V. CAMPBELL
techniques like CGI in documentary requires a rejection of pejorative

and often simplistic assertions about the failures of such programmes as
either ‘real’ science or ‘real’ documentary. Instead it develops a critical
framework that asks questions about how the entertainment and docu-
mentary techniques used in such programmes are shaped and influenced
by the representational traditions within the sciences being presented, the
traditions of how those sciences have been depicted in traditional docu-
mentaries, and the representations of those sciences in popular culture, all
working in combination. It argues that viewed through this conceptual
framework, pejorative dismissals of such programmes as not documen-
tary and/or not science potentially misunderstand and misrepresent how
such programmes may function as texts (and potentially function for audi-
ences). Rather than seeing such programmes through a rather narrow lens
of the dissemination and transmission of scientific knowledge and exper-
tise, many of these programmes arguably work at a different level entirely,
engaging audiences experientially and arguably also emotionally, with sci-
entific topics. This chapter will introduce a key theme that emerges across
this book, that is, by drawing on a range of culturally resonant imagery
and conceptual frameworks, many of these programmes, so readily dis-
missed on grounds of lacking scientific veracity or documentary sobriety,
are actually engaged in processes of making particular sciences, and the
phenomena they explore objects of amazement, wonder, awe and even
of the sublime. The chapter concludes with an illustration of how these
debates and ideas can be collectively applied to particular science docu-
mentary texts, focusing on programmes about criminal forensic science.
SCIENCE AND DOCUMENTARY: DISCOURSES OF SOBRIETY?

The relationship between science and documentary goes back a long way;
in fact, the very basis of documentary ‘claims to the real’ (Winston 2008)
lies in the claimed relationship between science and photography, claims
which today are significantly contested in terms of legitimacy (and pos-
sibility) yet remain part of the form’s persistence and appeal. The funda-
mental basis for this close association between documentary and science
lies in the notion of the relationship between the photographic camera
and reality, and its capacity as a ‘scientific instrument’ (Winston 2008:
135). That association was not an inevitable consequence of the develop-
ment of photographic technologies, but can be seen as part of the social
construction and accommodation of photography as belonging to a set
of emerging instrumental technologies of observation and recording that
ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORKS: SCIENCE, DOCUMENTARY ... 29
gradually began to shape scientific endeavours and processes, such as the

emergence of the telescope and microscope (Winston 2008: 133–136;
Wolf 1999). Though most of these other technologies are generally taken
for granted now (rightly or wrongly) their statuses, when new, were often
contested even within the sciences for which they were developed. Wolf,
for instance, points to some mistrust of microscopes by some early experts
in histology (1999: 275), and astronomers in the past have also found
problems with telescope technologies in their capacity to resolve faint
objects, falling back on hand-drawn images from observation (Nasim
2011). Nonetheless, the increasing use of such instruments created a con-
text in which photography could be promoted and utilised as a scientific
instrument. Eadweard Muybridge’s use of sequential photographs to cap-
ture horses running in the 1870s, settling arguments over whether their
legs left the ground when galloping, helped cement the notion that pho-
tography was a potential scientific instrument which captured ‘reality’ in a
manner akin to other scientific instruments (Winston 2008: 134). To this
day, documentary, as an extension of photography in this sense, perpetu-
ates this scientific assertion as part of its status. As Honess Roe explains:
The authenticity of a documentary and the power of its claim to be such

a type of film are deeply linked to notions of realism and the idea that
documentary images bear evidence of events that actually happened, by
virtue of the indexical relationship between image and reality. (2011: 216,
emphasis added)
Indexicality refers to ‘the way in which the appearance of an image is

shaped or determined by what it records: a photo of a boy holding
his dog will exhibit, in two dimensions, an exact analogy of the spatial
relationship between the boy and his dog in three dimensions’ (Nichols
2010: 35). As Nichols notes, however:
This is an assumption, encouraged by specific properties of lenses, emul-

sions, optics, sound recorders, and styles, such as realism: the sounds we
hear and the images we behold seem to bear the tangible trace of what
produced them. Digital computer graphic techniques can be used to achieve
a similar effect even though they create the sound or image they appear to
reproduce. (2010: 34, original emphasis)
The challenge brought by CGI to this fundamental element of docu-

mentary will be discussed further later in the chapter, and is a consistent
theme throughout the book. For the moment, it is important to note that
30 V. CAMPBELL
Nichols here is alerting us to how the claims to the real and the authentic-
ity of documentary rest not on the technology, so much as a combination
of producers’ assertions and, particularly, audience assumptions about the
indexical relationship between the imagery displayed and the sources of
that imagery. But documentary claims go beyond the simple indexicality of
images. Grierson’s much-quoted description of documentary as ‘the cre-
ative treatment of actuality’ (in Nichols 2010: 6) is repeatedly utilised by
scholars, not just because of Grierson’s seminal position in early documen-
tary production, but because the phrasing neatly signals how documenta-
ries don’t just reproduce raw footage but rather creatively ‘marshal evidence
and then use it to construct their own perspective or proposal about the
world’ (Nichols 2010: 36). Nichols argues that audiences ‘expect to learn
or be moved, to discover or be persuaded of possibilities that pertain to the
historical world’ (Nichols 2010: 38). As an aside, in recent years the rise of
mobile photography and film capability via camcorders and mobile phones
has given documentary-makers a whole new body of potential raw footage
to incorporate, and as discussed in relation to the Witness series of disaster
documentaries discussed in Chap. 6, even to construct entire programmes
from such material. Even in those programmes, however, the editorial
hand of the documentary-maker is still evident, and the point here is that
the creative treatment of reality apparent in documentary, unlike in fiction,
is intended to serve the audience through articulating some aspects of a
topic as they are constituted in the real world. It is this sense of the func-
tion and role of documentary that underpins Nichols’ seminal classification
of documentary as being, like science, a ‘discourse of sobriety’ (Nichols
2010: 36). Moran asserts, similarly:
Science and documentary, according to this perspective, share the same con-
figuration and the same epistemological goals: a union of man and technol-
ogy in search of a “truth” about the historical world. (1999: 258)
In this sense, of similar goals and aims, documentary not only parallels sci-
ence in some conceptualisations but also serves an important role in the
public dissemination of science. For instance, it has also been argued that
‘the science documentary occupies a particularly crucial discursive space
in contemporary culture: it mediates between the competing claims of
scientific and everyday understanding’ (Rosteck and Frentz 2009: 10).
In attempting to provide practices that correspond discursively to those of
science, the use of indexical imagery in documentary is typically augmented
by a variety of techniques that have become conventions of documentary

claims to the real such as ‘witness testimony, reconstruction and archival
footage’ (Winston 2008: 7). Of particular significance to science documen-
taries, as indicated in the previous chapter, is the use of expert testimony,
either as narrators, presenters or interviewees. Science documentaries, even
many factual entertainment programmes on science, quite often adopt
what Nichols refers to as the ‘expository mode’ of documentary (Nichols
2010). Nichols explains:
The expository mode emphasizes the impression of objectivity and well-

supported perspective. The voice-over commentary seems literally “above”
the fray; it has the capacity to judge actions in the historical world without
being caught up in them. The professional commentator’s official tone, like
the authoritative manner of news anchors and reporters, strives to build a
sense of credibility from qualities such as distance, neutrality, disinterested-
ness or omniscience. (2010: 169)
That authoritative tone is evident in a variety of science documentaries

regardless of the explicit presence or absence of scientific authorities within
the programmes themselves. Science programmes that solely use, as many
now do, actors and other media celebrities as narrators or presenters still
retain this authoritative expository narrative style, rooted in the generic
conventions of television science documentary as outlined in Chap. 1. Yet,
through these associations the seeds of contention and critique emerge in
two regards. First, scrutiny of science as a socio-cultural system in itself has
begun to challenge its assumptions, assertions, principles and practices.
Historical, philosophical and sociological studies of science in the last 50
years or so have started to question fundamental assumptions about sci-
ence’s epistemological claims. Unlike when both photography and later
documentary first appeared, where science was on a seemingly never-
ending upward trajectory of achievement and status, in the wake of work
such as Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962),
and the emergence of postmodernist and poststructuralist critiques of sci-
ence’s epistemology and practices, science’s claims to the real have been
challenged to substantial degrees. Challenges to scientific frameworks of
viewing the world today mean there are ‘problems of aligning documen-
tary with a positivistic theoretical view of nature and a singular method-
ological approach to communicating knowledge’ (Malitsky 2012: 239).
The notion of an independent ‘reality’ which science can be objectively
32 V. CAMPBELL
applied to in order to apprehend its true nature is fundamentally chal-

lenged by such lines of thought, as science is seen as necessarily socially
and culturally situated, as much a part of its politico-economic and socio-
cultural contexts as any other discourse, sober or otherwise.
Whilst these wider debates about the validity of science and epistemo-
logical discussions are beyond the scope of this book, the implications of
such ideas for science documentary are significant. As Gaines notes, for
instance, the problem with claims to be ‘“recording” reality is that this
assumes that there is a real “out there” in the natural world that can be
shown (or that will reveal itself) without the use of linguistic or cinematic
signs’ (1999: 2) which many argue is not possible. These perspectives argue
that reality is intrinsically constructed through ‘cultural signs’ and claims
to the real, whether made through science or documentary, are essentially
ideological claims as a result (ibid.: 2). It then follows that ‘like fiction,
science is a system of representation; rather than using language to create
life, it uses symbols to describe life, or to produce facts about life rather
than life itself’ (Moran 1999: 259). Another way of thinking about this is
via Silverstone’s important consideration of the inter-relationship between
science and documentary as narratives (1986). Many of the views of sci-
entists regarding the mediation of science reflect this problem of some-
times competing narratives, and similar debates are evident in relation to
reporting science in the news as well, whereby the expectations of how
science narratives should be constructed according to the dominant narra-
tive frames within science jar against the distinctive narrative frameworks of
the media (Dornan 1990; Campbell 2006). Silverstone’s study, focused on
the Horizon science documentary strand, notes how a tension emerges in
the intersection between documentary and scientific narratives, with docu-
mentary narratives being focused more heavily on aspects such as story
and characterisation than typical science narratives (Silverstone 1986: 83).
Strategies used in science documentary to assert their claims to the real,
for instance the reliance on indexical imagery, expert testimony and the
authoritative dominance of the presenter/narrator, are positioned not only
in terms of intrinsic claims to authenticity but because they contribute to
the desired overall narrative effect of telling a compelling and convincing
story. Despite the success of many of these programmes, the concern of
some scientists is that science is too often depicted in them ‘as a singular
and uniform activity, and that it is constructed through a very limited rep-
ertoire of frameworks’ (Silverstone 1999: 85). The strategies of a series
like Life on Earth or Cosmos, for example, with grand narratives offered
through a single voice, serve the narrative requirements for coherence and
consistency very effectively, but by failing to sufficiently acknowledge dis-
sonance, critique and contingency in science, this elides the complexities
and uncertainties that underpin the narratives of science. Even scientists
prominent in working in documentary have expressed concerns reflecting
this tension between two narrative forms. Professor Brian Cox, presenter
of a series of successful space science documentaries for the BBC (discussed
in Chap. 3), for instance, argued in a lecture on television science that it
was the responsibility of producers of television science programmes to
concentrate their coverage on the peer-reviewed scientific consensus of the
day, and to clearly signal when the content of programmes shifts from that
consensus of accepted knowledge and into the speculative or polemical
opinions of the presenters and contributors to programmes (2010). The
extent to which this is possible, even desirable, is not considered in such cri-
tiques, and the form and style of Cox’s own programmes test the viability
and value of such a position (as Chap. 3 will show). Such criticisms also rest
on flawed assumptions about the uniformity of the television documentary
medium, and audience passivity (Silverstone 1999: 85).
It is relatively easy to see, though, how concerns about the rise of fac-
tual entertainment programmes outlined in Chap. 1, drawing even more
of their representational tools from entertainment genres and narrative
formations than traditional documentaries, rest on the further stretching
of these tensions between the narratives of science and documentary, pos-
sibly to breaking point. Whether it’s primarily in the rise of hybrid formats,
such as docu-soaps, drama documentaries and “reality” formats, or in rela-
tion to the increasing overlap between traditional sciences and the pseudo-
scientific and popular belief as topics in factual entertainment (Campbell
2000, also Chap. 7), contemporary science documentary’s claims to the
real, to the scientific and as a discourse of sobriety are open to question
arguably more significantly than they ever have been before.
It would be wrong to think, however, that criticisms of science documen-
tary only really pertain to factual entertainment formats and techniques.
The kinds of fundamental critiques of documentary’s claims to the real
within documentary theory that more generally became a dominant schol-
arly framework from the 1990s onwards (Minh-Ha 1993; Gaines 1999;
Winston 2008; Malitsky 2012) have influenced growing critical attention
to science documentary. Critical scrutiny of wildlife films and natural history
documentary, for example, has emerged over the last 15–20 years which
chimes with these largely sceptical and critical approaches to documentary
34 V. CAMPBELL
in general, offering sometimes excoriating critiques of wildlife films’ claims

to be representing the ‘reality’ of nature, and identifying the dominance of
televisual and entertainment narratives and motives over and above scientific
ones (Bousé 1998, 2000, 2003; Chris 2002, 2006; Jeffries 2003; Gouyon
2011; Mitman 1999; Wheatley 2004). Natural history programmes provide
something of a cornerstone of television science documentary history, and
remain one of the most persistently popular and prized genres of ‘quality’
television, particularly in terms of public service broadcasting and produc-
ers such as the BBC’s Natural History Unit (Jeffries 2003, Wheatley 2004).
Nonetheless, criticism of natural history programmes’ claims to the real
have been extensive and systematic. Bousé, for instance, has argued that
wildlife films are not documentaries at all, for a range of reasons, not least
in the use of formal production and filming techniques used when filming
animals that would not be considered documentary techniques, or even
ethical, if applied to humans, such as covert filming and filming of acts that
would require consent from humans (2000: 23–24). The dominant narra-
tive frameworks of wildlife films, especially the so called ‘blue chip’ examples
such as Life on Earth mentioned in Chap. 1, have been critiqued by a range
of authors as presenting nature within a particular framework that largely
separates nature from man, concentrating on pristine environments, spec-
tacular photography and which ‘represents the natural world through the
old ecology of equilibrium and adaptation combined with romantic awe
and wonder’ (Jeffries 2003: 543). This ‘old ecology’ prevalent in blue chip
natural history programmes is critiqued for not reflecting the contemporary
ecologically aware context of the intrinsic intersection between man and
nature, instead presenting a rather archaic and ideological framing of nature
(Jeffries 2003: 543). Chris similarly argues:
By masking its political stakes, by diluting its environmentalist messages, the

wildlife genre provides an illusory picture of a pleasurably ordered, harmo-
nious, resilient natural world; that is, the comforting image of an eternal,
“natural”, depoliticized and heterotopically whole world. (2006: 202)
The emphasis in such programmes, it has been argued, is less on pre-

senting a scientifically positioned representation of nature but rather rep-
resentations that offer particular types of visual pleasure, with The Blue
Planet series, for instance, praised ‘for being spectacular, sublime, choreo-
graphed, balletic—even cinematic—with the Radio Times promoting the
belief that the spectacular nature of the series, the visual and aural pleasure
provided by the programme, was a public service in itself’ (Wheatley

2004: 331). This notion of the concentration on visual pleasure has been
noted across wildlife films and in the criticism that they ‘have followed
the path of Hollywood-style fictions and cinematic “illusions” rather than
that of documentary or science reporting’ (Bousé 2003: 227). This is
more than just a question of representational style for many critics, then,
as it involves a particular version of nature being presented that may not
correspond to scientific understandings. Some scholars go even further
arguing that the ‘very production values that give blue chip programmes
their authority—the leading edge science; the underexplored locations;
the respected presenters; the tenacity, endurance and expertise of the
production team—impel the product towards textualisations that work
against a proper sense of the uncertainties of scientific work’ (Dingwall
and Aldridge 2006: 147). As an illustration of this, the same authors in an
earlier study found a systematic tendency for natural history programmes
to misrepresent evolution, presenting a teleological framework for many
of the representations of animals depicted- as in narration/presentation
talking of ‘design’ in animals and plants (Aldridge and Dingwall 2003).
Misrepresenting evolution of all things within natural history programmes
would seem to be a glaring and fundamental problem in such programmes’
claims to the scientific, although interestingly Dingwall and Aldridge, very
much against the dominant thrust of critiques, note a cautious potential
for non-blue chip programmes to provide spaces for scientific exposition
by comparison (Dingwall and Aldridge 2006: 147).
Some of these concerns around wildlife films, and others such as the
prominence of anthropomorphism (Bousé 2000), will be returned to in later
chapters, particularly Chap. 4. Given the problems highlighted through criti-
cal consideration of natural history films, where at first glance the routine
indexicality of animals on screen would seem to offer few obvious points of
criticism, once we start to move into areas of science where the objects of
study aren’t as straightforward to film, or are even downright impossible to
capture indexically, the tensions between scientific and entertainment narra-
tives are potentially strained still further. The boundaries of the category of
documentary, fundamental claims to the real of ‘factual’ film and television
programmes, and relationships between documentary and science on the
one hand, and science and entertainment on the other, are brought to a head
with regard to what is arguably the most distinctive trend in factual entertain-
ment television of the last two decades, and particularly important in many of
these sciences where indexicality is an issue: the rise of CGI in documentary.
36 V. CAMPBELL
IMPOSSIBLE PICTURES: CGI AND SUBJUNCTIVE

DOCUMENTARY
For some scholars, amidst all the other points of contestation and query-
ing of documentary, the rise of digital animation presents the most funda-
mental threat to documentary’s claims to the real. Winston, for example,
states:
For nearly 170 years we have, however naively, tended to believe that, unless
there was strong reason to suppose otherwise, the photographic camera did
not lie. This assumption is grounded in the original positioning of the cam-
era as an instrument of science and one of its consequences has been the
possibility of the photograph being considered as evidence. It is the founda-
tion upon which the documentary film rests; but it is being undermined by
the digital. (Winston 2008: 7)
The problem with CGI for many scholars in relation to documentary is in

how it appears to break that link between the camera as an “instrument
of science” and thus documentary’s claim to the real, through a perceived
breaking of the indexical link in a shift from analogue photography to
digital imaging. This position is widespread in literature on photography,
film and documentary (Prince 2012: 149). Yet the use of digital imag-
ing technologies across a variety of sciences, particularly medical sciences
as well as in legal proceedings and journalism, shows ‘there is nothing
inherent to the nature of digital images that rules out indexicality’ (Prince
2012: 152). Quite why CGI might be seen to offer such a fundamental
and specific challenge to documentary, then, needs to be explored. Wolf
offered a particularly useful conceptual framework for the challenge CGI
brings to documentary, stating:
Whereas most documentaries are concerned with documenting events that

have happened in the past, and attempt to make photographic records of
them, computer imaging and simulation are concerned with what could be,
would be, or might have been; they form a subgenre of documentary we
might call subjunctive documentary, following the use of the term subjunc-
tive as a grammatical tense. (1999: 274, original emphasis)
The idea of subjunctive documentary is not just about the capacity of CGI
to construct imagery of events from the distant past, hypothetical events
of the future and so on, but is more fundamentally about the principles
and practices of computer simulation, the coding that goes into computer
animation which Wolf argues leads to ‘a shift from the perceptual to the
conceptual; the image has become an illustration constructed from data,
often representing an idea or speculation as much as or more than existing
objects or actual events’ (Wolf 1999: 286, original emphasis). Of particu-
lar concern here is the possibility of a lack of transparency for the audience
of the shift from the evidentiary nature of the documentary image to a
much more speculative and constructed image. Wolf argues, using the
example of the computer reconstruction of the ancient Meso-American
city of Tenochtitlan in the series 500 Nations (Santa Barbara Studios, USA
1995), that the problem is that often ‘it is difficult to tell from the imag-
ery alone where historical evidence ends and speculation begins’ (Wolf
1999: 282). Metz (2008) extends and updates Wolf’s concerns, arguing
that a decade after Wolf’s original piece the extent and nature of CGI in
documentary had become both more pronounced, and in their view, even
more problematic. Metz argues:
These subjunctive documentaries are profoundly aggressive in their insis-

tence that the fictions they are “documenting” not only could be real but
truly are real, because CGI has made them so. In a matter of years, the
form has matured quickly, from using CGI as an illustrative tool to creating
images so compelling that the need to attend to the factual basis underlying
the image has become secondary. (2008: 334)
Metz’s excoriating critique lambasts the rise of subjunctive documentary

and criticises famous scientists like Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku
for being involved in such programmes, and how they have ‘participated
in a somewhat easy blend of scientific knowledge and seductive science
fantasy in the media and have gotten rich doing it’ (Metz 2008: 344).
Focusing on programmes that, for instance, imagine what dragons might
have been like if they were real creatures, or what alien life forms and
ecosystems might be like (discussing the series Extraterrestrial, shown
in the UK as Alien Worlds and the version discussed in Chap. 3) Metz’s
concern is around the apparent elision in such programmes of the differ-
ence between science fact and science fiction, for instance in the prob-
lematic usage of ‘experts’ (Metz 2008: 340). What draws Metz’s ire in
particular is how this shift from knowledge to speculation is fuelled by
an ever-increasing attention to the spectacle of the CGI, resulting in a
situation where:
38 V. CAMPBELL
Marginally researched, fantastical interpretations of scientific ideas are pre-

sented as being as valuable as academically vetted scientific claims, as long as
they can be “imagineered” in CGI. In such a relativist position, the bound-
ary between knowledge and opinion becomes lost, and society loses the
potential use value of science. (2008: 346)
Whilst including discussions of more conventional documentary, this book

is centrally concerned precisely with the kinds of programmes that would
be framed as subjunctive documentary by Wolf and excoriated by Metz as
such. Assuming their negative impacts on public understanding of science,
with dire consequences for the planet as a result as Metz does (2008: 347),
reflects something of a wider and long-standing lament from the scientific
community about poor public understanding and media representations
of science. CGI is merely the most recent representational technology
to have been incorporated into these critiques and whether it deserves
the wrath it generates, alongside the critiques of other factual entertain-
ment trends considered in this book, needs a more considered analytical
approach. Although the idea of subjunctive documentary emerged in rela-
tion to the use of CGI, it might actually be used more effectively in relation
to the factual entertainment programmes that are thematically premised
on the boundaries of science and into the realms of the pseudoscientific
and popular belief (see Chap. 7 for a close discussion of such programmes).
Situating an appropriate analytical framework for evaluating CGI in science
documentary, however, begins with thinking about the use of animation in
documentary more generally.
Animation and Documentary
Animation has featured in documentary throughout its history (Malitsky
2012: 247), and as the discussion in Chap. 1 showed, the use of a huge
range of techniques, including animation, have featured in television sci-
ence documentary since the earliest days of television. Despite this, schol-
arly attention on the use of animation, digital or otherwise, is relatively
recent (e.g. DelGaudio 1997; Wells 1997; Strøm 2003; Hight 2008;
Bordwell 2009; Honess Roe 2011; Fore 2011), and the degree of atten-
tion given to the use of animation in science documentary is even smaller
in terms of scholarly consideration (Moran 1999; Wolf 1999; Van Dijck
2006; Metz 2008; Campbell 2009, 2014a, b). A variety of different con-
ceptual approaches have emerged in attempts to apprehend and make sense
of the use of animation in general and CGI in particular in the con-

text of documentary, and in combination these provide useful conceptual
and analytical frameworks to apply to the use of CGI in television science
documentary.
One immediate issue for scholars addressing the use of animation in
documentary, and entirely (or predominantly) animated documentaries,
has been a perceived need to validate the labelling of such material as doc-
umentary in the first place. If the notion of indexicality is a core expecta-
tion of documentary, then animation might be problematic in terms of its
fit with this requirement (Honess Roe 2011: 216). After all, as DelGaudio
notes that since ‘an animated film “exists” only when it is projected—there
is no pre-existing reality, no pro-filmic event captured in its occurrence—
its classification as documentary can be problematic’ (DelGaudio 1997:
190). Not only are the images of animation not indexical in the con-
ventional sense but also ‘unlike other forms of documentary expression,
the animated version inherently (though not universally) relies on reenact-
ment’ (Fore 2011: 278, original emphasis). Given that animation involves
neither indexicality nor unstaged action initially ‘it would seem impos-
sible to consider an animated film as a documentary’ (Bordwell 2009).
Furthermore, some argue ‘that there is a tendency to view documentary as
a mode of discourse that will not allow such subjective, expressive aspects’
typically associated with animation (Ward 2005: 82). Animation sets the
audience member up in a:
Reflexive viewing position [which] is entirely typical of the audience’s nor-

mal mode of engagement with animation. Viewers’ own eyes tell them that
what they are seeing is different from both ‘live-action’ film and the normal
visual perception of material reality, a difference that registers as something
artificial or fantastic. (Fore 2011: 280)
Animation in documentary may work, as Nichols argues of re-enactment

more generally, therefore as a signal of the ‘documentary voice’ referring
to ‘the embodied speech of a historical person—the filmmaker’ (Nichols
2008: 79). The notion of voice, of position, of discourse in documentary,
rather than just indexical imagery, shifts attention from the kinds of imagery
a documentary contains, for if ‘we see documentary films as tacitly asserting
a state of affairs to be factual, we can see that no particular sort of images
guarantees a film to be a doc’ (Bordwell 2009: np, emphasis added). Strøm
goes further, arguing that whilst it may no longer be ‘possible to believe
40 V. CAMPBELL
in photography as a guarantee for truth’ given the inherent manipulation

of all images in documentary texts through the construction of a particular
documentary voice, ‘that does not mean we cannot trust the photography’
rather it is ‘the context it is presented in and the credibility of the medium
that presents it’ which is more important (2003: 54, original emphasis).
This is not just a semantic exercise, of trying to square the circle of
allowing animation into documentary. The very label of ‘documentary’,
and to a similar extent the label of ‘factual’, carries a level of cultural and
intellectual credibility that other categories of screen content (such as
‘reality television’) do not. The very debate about the boundaries between
‘proper’ documentary and factual entertainment amongst producers and
scholars shows what’s at stake in the label to the point where it is not
only producers who clearly want to associate their texts with documen-
tary (to elicit audience trust) but also some scholars in trying to incorpo-
rate animated works into documentary analysis approaches, for instance
attempting to position them within or in relation to Nichols’ model of
documentary modes. An evident problem here is that ‘there seems to be
a tendency to “squeeze” [a text] into a frame of reference in order to vali-
date it, that is to say that if we manage to fit an animated film into one of
Nichols’ categories we have, so to speak, proven that it is a documentary’
(Rozenkrantz 2011). This problem is demonstrable in the lack of consen-
sus over which mode documentary animation belongs in, with claims that
animation sits in the ‘reflexive’ mode (DelGaudio 1997; Fore 2011), the
‘performative’ mode (Strøm 2003: 52), and the ‘interactive’ (or partici-
patory) mode (Ward 2005: 95). It is notable that none of these explicit
and implicit attempts to fit animation into Nichols’ modes centre on its
usage in the ‘expository’ mode, even when they acknowledge the poten-
tial for its usage as such (e.g. Strøm 2003: 53; Ward 2005: 86). Yet, as
this book will show, the use of CGI is a prevalent feature of contemporary
science documentaries and factual entertainment programmes, reflecting
a long-standing tradition of using animation in science documentary, even
within the most didactic of expository documentary styles often used in
science programmes. Such scholarly blind spots may be due to erroneous
assumptions being made about the nature of scientific discourses in sci-
ence documentaries involving monolithic, positivistic claims to certainty
in knowledge and understanding, expounded by ‘Great Scientists’ mainly
in to-camera monologues, and thus leading to rather uninteresting visual
and narrative composition. Whilst undoubtedly, some science documenta-
ries have had this kind of talking head, ‘informative lecture’ format (Jeffries
2003: 531) format leaving little of apparent interest for aesthetic interro-
gation and analysis, in fact the history of television science documentary
reveals a much wider array of aesthetic forms, styles and techniques that
have fed into contemporary science documentaries and factual entertain-
ment, as Chap. 1 touched upon. In many ways, the subjects of science
documentaries regularly lend themselves to creative visualisation and CGI
provides another tool in often long-standing creative representational tra-
ditions within particular sciences.
Whether it’s through dismissing or questioning the use of CGI as wish-
ful thinking and subjunctive documentary or marginalising the focus on
CGI used in expository documentaries, several scholars have clearly missed
the opportunity to validate the interrogation and exploration of the uses of
CGI in documentary more fully through neglecting its extensive usage in
science documentary and factual entertainment programmes (or dismiss-
ing claims to either science or documentary in such programmes). Those
scholars who have begun to try and make sense of CGI in documentary
on its own terms show that there isn’t necessarily a simple relationship
between questions of ‘real’ documentary on the one hand and subjunctive
documentary on the other, with the boundary existing in terms of the use
of CGI or not. Moran, for instance, argued that animation and digital doc-
umentary can succeed ‘as a mode of representation for documenting the
unseen, the unseeable, and the foreseen whose existence is at least possible
if not provable’ (1999: 263). For subjects such as prehistory they argue
that digital documentary provides the most effective means of reconstruct-
ing the past (for more on this see Chap. 4). Since Wolf and Moran were
writing, CGI has increasingly become a central tool in a variety of science
documentary subject areas, just as CGI has become in fact a central tool
within some sciences. For instance, in astronomy, digital imaging is now
the standard tool for capturing astronomical images (see Chap. 3 for a full
discussion), and in the decade and a half or so since Wolf raised his concerns
about such devices, they have become the standard form of even everyday
photography in personal cameras, mobile phones and so on. Normative or
overtly pejorative responses to CGI in documentary may be valid but only
if they can be grounded both in full acknowledgement of the development
and usage of digital imaging technologies within sciences themselves, and
also in valid analytical approaches to understanding and evaluating the, in
fact, many varied ways in which CGI is used in documentary.
Several approaches to animation and CGI in documentary have been
suggested. Honess Roe makes the vital point that ‘animation is not used
42 V. CAMPBELL
in the same way in all animated documentaries’ (Honess Roe 2011: 225),
and one approach has been to try to develop a set of modes pertaining
specifically to animated documentaries. Wells’ (1997) model, for exam-
ple, reflects a notable scholarly emphasis on the subjective, reflective and
expressive uses of animation at the expense of nuanced uses of animation
for exposition, with three of his four modes, the ‘subjective’, the ‘fantastic’
and the ‘postmodern’ being closely overlapping modes focused on aesthetic
experimentation, expression of inner states, surrealism and other exotic uses
of animation (Wells 1997: 43–45). Only his first mode, the ‘imitative’, is
focused on the use of animation in ways that ‘conform to “naturalist” rep-
resentation and use the generic conventions of some documentary forms’
(Wells 1997: 41). Honess Roe suggests, particularly with the inclusion of
the postmodern, that Wells’ modes reflect a ‘trend in scepticism regarding
the documentary project’ contemporary to Wells (Honess Roe 2011: 225).
Here the lack of interest in or attention to animation for exposition can be
related to some scholars’ rejection of the capability of even ‘conventional
documentary representation (as in, live-action) to access or show reality’
(Honess Roe 2011: 225) let alone animation, as indicated earlier.
Honess Roe’s own attempt to codify the uses of animation in doc-
umentary suggests that it functions ‘in three key ways: mimetic substi-
tution, non-mimetic substitution, and evocation’ (Honess Roe 2011:
225). The function of mimetic substitution is where ‘animation illustrates
something that would be very hard, or impossible, to show with the con-
ventional live-action alternative and often it is directly standing in for live-
action footage’ (Honess Roe 2011: 226). Akin to the use of reenactments
where footage is not, or could not be, available, in this function animation
is ‘made to closely resemble reality, or rather, the look of a live-action
recording of reality’ (Honess Roe 2011: 226). Honess Roe’s other func-
tions relate to the use of animation in ways which explicitly do not attempt
verisimilitude but instead offer visual interpretations of other elements in
the content, with ‘non-mimetic substitution’ relating to visuals tied to
specific documentary elements such as using images of animals linked to
interviewees’ voices, and ‘evocation’ referring more to visualisation of
individuals’ subjective experiences (Honess Roe 2011: 226–227). Honess
Roe’s approach also displays a far greater interest in aesthetic experimen-
tation and expression (i.e. the non-mimetic and evocative), and does not
elaborate on issues relating to which specific representational tropes are
being reproduced in any given mimetic substitution, and as the discussion
in this book will demonstrate, this is a crucial additional factor to make
sense of the varied uses of CGI in science documentary. Mimetic substitu-

tion is not merely a simple case of the close replication of photography or
cinematography, particularly in some science documentaries where objects
being visualised are beyond the capacity of humans to witness visually
‘live’ in an unmediated fashion, as is evident from the use of time-lapse,
high-speed, infrared and night vision cameras even before animation and
CGI are considered. Complicating things further, in turn, some of these
traditional visual augmentation techniques, like night vision, are often
reproduced in CGI in some programmes, blurring the potential for identi-
fying clear boundaries between mimetic, non-mimetic and evocative func-
tions of CGI further still.
Another model adds additional elements into the mix, advancing
the development of analytical frameworks for such programmes (Hight
2008). Hight’s model incorporates the variety of uses of CGI in a manner
useful for application to science documentary, beginning by making an
important distinction between computer-mediated images and computer-
generated images as illustrative of a continuum along which computer ani-
mation techniques may be utilised (Hight 2008: 13, emphasis added). At
one end of this continuum, computer-mediated images are ‘elements of
the indexical and photographic [placed] within animation and morphing
sequences during post-production’ (Hight 2008: 13). This might consist
of, for instance, compositing of text captions over live-action footage or
manipulation of live-action footage to highlight particular components
of the image or sound, such as digitally altering the focus of an image to
direct the viewers’ attention to particular elements within the image. Many
of the traditional techniques of documentary montage are now done using
computers and have been augmented by sophisticated computer media-
tion techniques, such as compositing. At the other end of the continuum
are entirely CGI where key components in an image have been created
within the computer (Hight 2008: 13), such as the dinosaurs in Walking
with Dinosaurs. Along this continuum, the degree to which audiences are
aware of such digital manipulation/creation of images is open to varia-
tion, so assumptions about a necessarily reflexive response to computer-
generated animation, for instance, may be misplaced, particularly when
animation is being used in the context of scientific exposition.
Hight usefully recognises that the use of computer imagery from
mediation to generation intersects with a ‘discursive continuum within
animation more generally, that between photorealism and the explora-
tion of purely symbolic or abstract forms’ (Hight 2008: 13). Along this
44 V. CAMPBELL
continuum content ranges from ‘symbolism’ at one end, focusing on ‘iconic

and metaphoric forms of representation’ to ‘photorealism’ at the other,
that is ‘replicating cinematography rather than human perception and
experience of reality itself’ (Hight 2008: 13). Where uses of CGI sit
along these two continuums within particular programmes highlight what
Hight sees as an ‘inherent tension’ (Hight 2008: 13) between documen-
tary claims to the real and representational conventions of how claims to
the real are made in documentary, and as this book will argue, this tension
is particularly foregrounded by science programmes where imagery is a
product of negotiation between the competing narratives and represen-
tational traditions of documentary (and factual entertainment) as well as
those of the sciences covered.
Hight utilises this schematic approach to identify three key modes evi-
dent in the use of digital animation. The first is called the ‘symbolic expo-
sitional’ mode and refers to the use of informational graphics and graphical
forms used to offer ‘simplistic three-dimensional modular reconstructions
of events’ (Hight 2008: 14) such as wireframe animations. The value of
this analytical category is that such imagery does not involve the imita-
tion of or mimetic substitution for live-action footage but is fundamentally
expository in terms of intent and design, and reflects long-used conven-
tions in certain types of documentary (and in certain sciences also). Simple
line-drawn animation, following traditions of blueprints and technical
drawing, has been used for some decades in science documentaries, indeed
even after the development of wireframe computer animation on occasion
the relative cost and technical procedures needed to produce actual com-
puter wireframe animation has led film-makers to use drawn animation in
a wireframe style instead, as for instance in a sequence in the documentary
about the Apollo 11 mission, Moonwalk One (USA 1970), depicting the
various stages of the Saturn 5 rocket launch. Similarly, the ‘“animated
map” has become a convention used to the point of cliché’ (Hight 2008:
14). Being widely recognised tools for the simplified conveying of some-
times ‘complex natural and social phenomena’ (Hight 2008: 14) beyond
documentary, their use has always been part of the evidential claims to
the real made by documentary. Digital animation techniques provide far
greater scope, however, for both variation in the visual design and display
of such information and its incorporation into other elements of the docu-
mentary image, such as superimposing a computer-generated map onto
live-action footage of a location. As Chap. 5 will show, not only are this
technique and similar practices now a staple component of archaeology
documentaries on television, in some cases they have become the organis-

ing principle around which archaeology documentaries are constructed,
for instance in series built around CGI representations of particular new
digital archaeological techniques. The use of expository symbolic anima-
tion, digital or conventional, persists across the sciences considered in
the book, and one of the key things that is noticeable about this is the
relationship between the particular uses and forms of such animation in
the contexts of documentaries focused on different sciences, whether it is
archaeology, space sciences or criminal forensics.
Hight’s second mode is referred to as ‘graphic verité’ (Hight 2008:
17), whereby digital animation is utilised in photorealistic dramatic recon-
structions. Like ideas of imitative or mimetic uses of animation, in this
mode, events are created in the absence of, or impossibility of acquiring,
live-action footage but with the aim of invoking the indexicality of live-
action footage. Hight notes a paradox here in such programmes appearing
to invoke the claims to the real of the representational strategies being
so painstakingly reproduced through CGI, whilst at the same time often
being promoted and marketed in a way that foregrounds their artifice
and constructed nature (Hight 2008: 18–19). One early and highly inci-
sive consideration of Walking with Dinosaurs noted this tension evident
in some of the imagery not just featured in the series but used repeatedly
as part of promotional material and trailers—the CGI of a Tyrannosaurus
rex roaring at the camera and leaving spit on the lens (Scott and White
2003). The usage of very similar sequences in which computer-generated
objects are depicted as interacting with a camera lens (which is also itself
a consequence of computer animation) has become a notable trope in
programmes about extinct animals and in other types of science documen-
taries as well (see Chaps. 3 and 4 for examples of this).
However, to acknowledge that CGI here is, in essence, reproducing
photographic traditions of realism through replicating the camera/object
association in an overt manner isn’t really enough to fully capture the
distinctive range of uses of graphic verité CGI. Two other aspects are rel-
evant to add in here. First, the use of camera and notions of photographic
authenticity, truth and ‘realism’ are constructed in noticeably different
ways from one subcategory of science documentary to another. The ‘spit
on the lens’ imagery, for instance, is not only an overt attempt to present
images as if photographic in nature but in addition relates to a convention
in natural history documentary of invoking a sense of authenticity and
intimacy through getting cameras (and or lenses) as close as possible to
46 V. CAMPBELL
animals in the wild. In the recent live-action BBC natural history series
Life Story, for instance, one remarkable sequence of a pair of juvenile
cheetahs hunting was captured by a human cameraperson using a steadi-
cam, which was able to follow the cheetahs from a few feet away without
apparently disrupting their normal behaviour. Proximity to natural animal
behaviour—so close you can almost reach out and touch the animals—is
a marker of natural history films’ claims to authenticity. Whilst this notion
of apparent intimacy has been critiqued within general critiques of natural
history programmes (in this case by Bousé 2003), it is such a convention
of natural history programmes to be clearly being invoked in the spit on
the lens scenes in Walking with Dinosaurs (as well as in many other extinct
animal shows, see Chap. 4). In other categories of science documentary,
however, the use of photographic imagery to convey authenticity and real-
ism is quite differently positioned. In programmes about weather and nat-
ural disasters, for instance, authenticity is invoked not by pristine, steady,
perfectly framed close-ups but more often through the use of shaky, poorly
focused imagery typical of amateur footage recorded by disaster victims.
As Chap. 6 will show not only has such footage on occasion been used
as the central footage of programmes on weather and disasters, but those
that either reconstruct historical disasters or imagine future ones also tend
to reproduce the attributes of amateur, victim footage—reproducing the
shaking and blurring of images in CGI to give those images contextually
appropriate markers of authenticity. So, where photorealistic CGI appears
in science documentary it may be in specific relation to reproduction of
conventions of what is considered to be authentic photographic imagery
within the specific documentary traditions for that scientific area, and that
needs to be recognised and incorporated into analysis.
A second way to enhance and augment Hight’s notion of a graphic
verité mode of photorealistic CGI is to consider those instances where the
subject material being constructed in a photorealistic manner is beyond
human experience, closer to the realm of the subjunctive discussed by Wolf
and others. Traditional documentaries using conventional live-action pho-
tographic imagery generate a sense of authenticity from that imagery being
‘referentially realistic’ (Kirby 2011: 27). In other words, ‘to the audience
the images and activities on the screen are “referents” to real entities and
situations in the natural world’ (Kirby 2011: 27). So, for instance, the
shaky and blurry images of amateur footage of a hurricane convey authen-
ticity because they reference real experiences (or logical expectations) of
the viewer that being caught in a hurricane would produce such images
when trying to film it, as well as signalling the authenticity of the person
using the camera as an ‘amateur’. In some uses of photorealistic CGI, such
as constructing an historical or hypothetical future hurricane, say, the prox-
imity of images to referentially real images is not much of a stretch for the
viewer. However, in other types of photorealistic CGI imagery, referential-
ity is not possible. For instance, no humans have ever seen dinosaurs liv-
ing and breathing, and similar programmes that construct imaginary alien
life forms that might exist in the universe such as Alien Worlds (2005) or
programmes that imagine how life might evolve on Earth in the future
The Future is Wild (2004) often use graphic verité photorealism but with
regard to objects without referents entirely—in essence they are ‘referen-
tially fictional’ (Prince 1996: 32). This tendency for factual entertainment
programmes to extend beyond the known in their representations and into
the referentially fictional is where for many critics the tension between tele-
vision entertainment and science breaks down as programmes shift from
science to fantasy, from the known to speculation with the use of photo-
realism seen as problematic through the lack of drawing audiences’ atten-
tion to the level of scientific veracity underpinning the images on display
(Wolf 1999; Metz 2008). Whether or not T.rex roared and produced spit-
tle in a manner to produce spit on a hypothetical lens, for instance, is too
much in the realms of speculation and supposition for such critics.
Yet there is another, less pejorative, way of thinking about the use
of photorealism in referentially fictional imagery by focusing on realism
not in terms of referentiality but instead in terms of ‘perceptual realism’
(Prince 1996). Prince explains:
A perceptually realistic image is one which structurally corresponds to the

viewer’s audiovisual experience of three-dimensional space… Such images
display a nested hierarchy of cues which organise the display of light, colour,
texture, movement and sound in ways that correspond with the viewer’s
own understanding of these phenomena in daily life. (1996: 32)
Dinosaurs or aliens, in this perceptually realistic sense, then, need only to

appear to correspond to viewers’ perceptions of how humans and animals
interact with the real world. In fiction films, the primary focus of Prince’s
theory, perceptual realism is important for the suspension of disbelief that
is intrinsic to the success/failure of fiction films depicting unreal images
whether aliens, dinosaurs, superheroes or whatever (Kirby 2011: 33).
In documentary terms, this then is not merely subjunctive documentary,
48 V. CAMPBELL
in the sense of wishful thinking and pure imagination. Especially in a pro-

gramme making the explicit claim to the real of being factual, being a docu-
mentary, ensuring the imagery has at least the potential to be perceptually
realistic is an imperative if the programme is to work, to be effective. So, for
example, if a programme depicts a large dinosaur walking along and wants
audiences to be persuaded by it, to see the image as corresponding to how a
dinosaur might have moved, it should do things that we know large animals
do when walking today, such as leave footprints, move undergrowth and
plants aside and so on. T. rex spit on the lens might be scientific speculation,
referentially fictional and in some senses subjunctive imagery but in corre-
sponding to viewers’ experiences/expectations of what a giant, carnivorous
animal might do it becomes a perceptually realistic image. In this sense, it
could be argued to conform to the ‘documentary contract’ between film-
maker and viewer whereby ‘the spectator’s trust that the images, as docu-
mentary, were generated in good faith’ (Moran 1999: 265).
Kirby’s development of Prince’s approach offers a particularly impor-
tant consideration in the evaluation of factual entertainment and docu-
mentary uses of perceptually, as opposed to referentially, realistic imagery.
With regard to the dinosaurs of the Spielberg Jurassic Park films used
as an example, the behaviour and movement of the CGI dinosaurs are
constructed according to attributes of existing animals like elephants and
birds to try and provide a perceptually realistic sense of the dinosaurs’
interaction with the environment they’re animated into (Prince 1996: 33;
Kirby 2011: 29–30). It has been noted though that in fact even with
regard to these real-world proxies of living animals, for many audience
members their experience of those animals is highly likely to be predomi-
nantly mediated, rather than directly experiential. Kirby suggests:
What this means is that the mediated nature of film images actually contrib-
utes to the reality effect specifically because audiences’ experience with cor-
responding creatures and objects comes through other media forms. (2011:
30, original emphasis)
Kirby gives another example, of science fiction films in the 1950s depict-
ing spaceship rocket launches akin to actual rocket launches as depicted
in newsreels of the day, from which most audiences would have gleaned
their sense of what a spaceship rocket launch was like (2011: 30–32).
Rather than simply dismiss such imagery as fantasy and speculation then,
it is important to analyse what the corresponding reference points are in
the attempts to achieve perceptually realistic imagery. To what extent, for

instance, are perceptually realistic images shaped by the representational
traditions within particular scientific disciplines (palaeoimagery or astro-
nomical imaging say) and/or by representational traditions within popular
culture regarding those scientific areas (dinosaur movies, science fiction
and so on)? A further aspect of this is to raise the issue of whether in
this kind of imagery the goal is in fact simplistic transmission of scientific
knowledge, or whether the use of perceptually realistic images is to serve an
entirely different purpose. Critics focus on the uses of techniques like CGI
in factual television programmes when they go beyond established scien-
tific knowledge into speculation on theory, into the subjunctive and into
the referentially fictional, and which do so without signalling this clearly.
However, they are arguably making the assumption that articulations of
established scientific knowledge alone are the sole goals of science docu-
mentary and factual entertainment. In fact, as the sections that follow will
demonstrate, such imagery, perhaps paradoxically, can be used as evidence
of goals within factual entertainment and television documentary science
that are not about the simple exposition of scientific knowledge so much
as attempts to invoke an experiential response from audiences, used not
just for a sense of spectacle, in the pejorative sense meant by many critics,
but also for arguably loftier goals of public engagement with the potential
in scientific theory and possibility for awe, wonder and the sublime. Rather
than debasing science in the eyes of viewers, perhaps, just perhaps, such
programmes are engaging audiences with science in an entirely different
and potentially more constructive and positive manner than a focus on their
transmission of peer-reviewed, consensus scientific knowledge would sug-
gest. Indeed, perhaps such programmes are constructed around address-
ing the experiential needs and expectations of audiences ahead of those of
the scientific community (Eitzen 2005). This might sound rather obvious
but it is surprising how often the views and expectations of many scien-
tists, even those experienced and prominent in the media and documentary
themselves, reflect a rather blinkered and self-serving notion of the role of
the media, subordinating it to the needs of scientific dissemination above
all other concerns, with the validity of that dissemination judged according
to scientific principles with the media routinely found wanting according
to such criteria, and audience needs, knowledge and capabilities for under-
standing, similarly demeaned or marginalised (Campbell 2006).
Before discussing the notion of the sublime as it might pertain to the
analysis of factual entertainment and science documentary on television, it
50 V. CAMPBELL
is important to return to the third and last of Hight’s analytical modes of

computer animation in documentary, which he calls the ‘invasive surveil-
lance’ mode, and which refers to the addition of digital animation tech-
niques to existing technologies that ‘extend the range and penetration of
the documentary lens’ (Hight 2008: 19). In essence, this category of CGI
goes even further away from referentially realistic imagery, and focuses on
the creation of imagery in relation to objects (and/or experiences) that
are either beyond the capacity for conventional cameras to capture, such
as events at the cellular level or in the hearts of stars or black holes, or
beyond the capacities of normal human perception such as depictions of
light beyond the visible spectrum and processes taking place at extremely
high (or low) speeds. These aren’t specific to CGI, as some techniques in
conventional photography produce images of this type, such as ‘time-lapse
photography, time-slice photography and motion-control photography
within primetime nature documentary, the use of surveillance tools within
investigative reporting’ (Hight 2008: 19), as well as things like night
vision and infrared camera, alongside medical technologies such as MRI or
ultrasound scanners. Focusing on uses in programmes about medicine and
the body, Hight argues this constitutes a type of ‘penetrative voyeurism’
(2008: 21) and an increasing use of CGI to augment, reproduce and
substitute these analogue techniques has become evident in recent years.
The terminology here, invoking voyeurism, invasiveness and surveillance,
implies a degree of concern about the trend for the usage of such imag-
ery that parallels concerns raised about the use of cameras in docu-soaps,
reality TV and hidden camera or fixed-rig documentaries. Whilst the use
of CGI in such imagery might be less literally physically invasive than a
camera being inserted in a person’s body, say, and the construction of
images of the insides of organisms, cells or other objects (such as inside
planets or subatomic particles) lacks the ethical urgency of programmes
using hidden camera set-ups or raw surveillance footage for entertainment
(shows like World’s Wildest Police Videos), the question of invasiveness in
where cameras should go in terms of what is in the interests of scientific
exposition as opposed to what makes for entertaining television, is still
a relevant issue here. For instance, the rise in popularity of forensic sci-
ence within popular culture has filtered through into a variety of factual
entertainment and science documentary on television, to the point where
one can talk of something of a forensic turn in factual entertainment pro-
grammes. As well as via true crime programmes directly about forensic
science, a forensic orientation is evident in a variety of other subcategories
of science factual entertainment and documentary programmes, including

natural history (Inside Nature’s Giants 2009–), palaeontology (Jurassic
CSI 2011), archaeology (History Cold Case 2010–2011) and even in the
pseudoscientific realms of paranormal factual entertainment programmes
(Haunting Evidence 2005–2006). In many of these programmes, exam-
ples of which are discussed in more detail in later chapters, the use of CGI
in depicting, for instance, the interior of tombs and graves and the inside
of bodies of dead animals and humans, as well as in the reconstruction of
bodies, also generates questions around ethics alongside those of scientific
and documentary authenticity, akin to the concerns about ethics in natural
history documentaries mentioned earlier in the chapter (Bousé 2000).
CONCLUSION: FROM THE SUBJUNCTIVE TO THE SUBLIME?

One of the features of discussions of both the problems of documentary
claims to the real and the problems of the impact of factual entertainment
on documentary is how, arguably, their strong normative dimensions mask
some particularly interesting avenues of critical engagement that emerge in
the close analysis of contemporary documentary and factual entertainment
television. As Eitzen recognised with regard to audience responses to his-
torical documentaries, the concerns of historians and documentary-makers
over the techniques and approaches of ‘popular’ historical programmes,
which might also be categorised as factual entertainment programmes, are
largely at odds with the audience’s primary concern ‘with the emotional
“pull” of documentaries about the past’ (Eitzen 2005: 409). Analytical
concepts such as that of subjunctive documentary and the lens of scientific
veracity used by Metz (2008) and debates about the essential viability or
otherwise of the documentary project don’t fully encapsulate factual enter-
tainment science programmes. Rather than just dismiss them as wishful
thinking, non-scientific, and non-documentaries, a more interesting set of
questions emerge about the choices such programmes make in trying to
visualise the unvisualisable, the choices made in, to use Van Dijck’s phrase,
the ‘picturising’ of science (Van Dijck 2006) in ways that may resonate
with and engage the ‘popular’ audience. As this book will show, there are
indeed often quite specific representational tropes and patterns within par-
ticular sciences as depicted in science documentary that reflect these inter-
sections between science, documentary and popular culture. Sometimes
these are peculiar to the particular scientific area and its visual representa-
tion, from the patterns of representations of space (Chap. 3) for instance,
52 V. CAMPBELL
having both some clear parallels with but also significant differences to, say,
palaeontology (Chap. 4), or the earth and atmospheric sciences (Chap. 6).
Yet, across the range of scientific, and pseudoscientific topics covered in
this book, there are arguably larger patterns at work—inflected in particu-
lar ways within each area, but following arguably deeper and richer repre-
sentational traditions, reflecting culturally resonant conceptual frameworks
that provide a context that enables audiences to engage with, understand
and appreciate the content of such texts.
One of these, which recurs across the sciences and programmes con-
sidered in this book, is the sublime. To suggest that some of the more
highly criticised examples of factual entertainment television science might
invoke the sublime might seem at best problematic but as Wheatley argues
it is possible to see how ‘notions of beauty, spectacle, the sublime, and
so on, are and continue to be, firmly entrenched in definitions of quality
television’ (Wheatley 2004: 337). This book will show how the sublime in
particular keeps recurring as a representational theme in different ways and
serves not only as a means of understanding both the compositional form of
contemporary science documentaries, but also, perhaps, for understanding
a degree of their popular appeal. Why factual entertainment programmes
are popular, regardless of their scientific veracity or composition of primar-
ily computer-generated, dramatised and staged scenes, may have more to
do with how they position science within culturally appealing frameworks
of understanding, tapping into narratives and imagery that resonate with
audiences over and above the limits of scientific knowledge. Dinosaurs,
outer space, natural disasters and so on have demonstrable cultural appeal
beyond their associated scientific disciplines, and the concept of the sub-
lime provides a potential explanatory framework for that appeal, as well as
distinctive ideological and aesthetic traditions within which documentary
and factual entertainment can be positioned.
The sublime has become a much-debated and highly complicated con-
cept in contemporary philosophy (for an excellent overview, see Shaw
2006), but in terms of its application to science documentary and factual
entertainment three broad conceptualisations of the sublime are particu-
larly useful. The first owes much to Edmund Burke’s seminal detailed
consideration of the sublime in the 18th century, and focuses on the emo-
tional effects of nature on people. He states:
The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes
operate most powerfully, is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of
the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror.
(Burke 1756/1998: 53, original emphasis)
The sublime for Burke is an extreme emotional reaction of terror or horror

to the scale and power of particularly natural objects—like oceans, volca-
noes, natural disasters and dangerous animals. The possibility of pleasure
in experiencing the sublime arises ‘from terror’s aftermath, in the delight
experienced when the threat is relieved or recognized as only illusory’
(Kessler 2012: 47). Immanuel Kant developed a similar conceptualisation
of the sublime, but classified this arousal of terror as the ‘dynamic sublime’
(1790; see also Nye 1994: 7; Kessler 2012: 49), referring specifically to
objects that invoke feelings of terror, albeit in a controlled and distanced
manner, such as observing a volcanic eruption or flood from a safe distance
away. Terror or astonishment may be sublime responses, but so too can
awe—in essence, responses in which, for a brief time, an overwhelming of
the senses occurs, a kind of take-your-breath-away moment. All too read-
ily the attempt to elicit this kind of response in documentary is both rec-
ognised and dismissed by some scholars. Take, for example, the critiques
of natural history films discussed towards the beginning of this chapter,
and the tendency to treat these potential goals of natural history to try
and invoke the sublime as mere escapism and no more than ‘a conveyor
belt of awe’ (Jeffries 2003: 531). Arguably already apparent in the BBC
series The Blue Planet, as claimed by Wheatley (2004), this is even more
evident in the cinematic film produced in the wake of that series’ global
success, Deep Blue. Replacing David Attenborough with actor Michael
Gambon as the narrator, and paring down the narration to leave long
sequences consisting of images of the seas and oceans, accompanied by
rousing music—sometimes several minutes at a time with barely a word of
narration—there’s little question that at least some contemporary science
programmes are engaged in presenting the natural world as a beautiful
and sublime place. Certainly the occasions when successful natural his-
tory series are re-cut and repackaged for cinematic release (as similarly
occurred with the series Planet Earth (2006) being turned into the Patrick
Stewart-narrated film Earth (2007)), the presence of the dynamic sublime
is particularly foregrounded.
The dynamic or Burkean sublime, however, should not be seen as a
simplistic conceptualisation akin to the notion of mere spectacle, as there
is an associated ideational function of the invocation of the sublime. This
is particularly evident in the extension of the dynamic sublime into what
54 V. CAMPBELL
some have called the ‘apocalyptic sublime’ (Gunn and Beard 2000) linking
the concept of the sublime to the long-standing cultural framing of natu-
ral disasters as either judgements of God (or Nature) on human behav-
iour, going back to biblical flood narratives, the legend of Atlantis and so
on. In art and literature, from the fine art of John Martin (1789–1854),
through cultural trends for volcano narratives in drama and fiction in the
19th century (Daly 2011), the apocalyptic sublime has arguably persisted
in disaster narratives into the contemporary era, such as in Hollywood
disaster movies. As this book will show, it is also possible to see the apoca-
lyptic, dynamic Burkean sublime at play in current factual entertainment
science documentaries, perhaps most evidently in programmes about nat-
ural disasters and the weather (see Chap. 6) but, interestingly, appearing in
other types of science documentary as well as an identifiable theme (such
as in space science, palaeontology and archaeology documentaries).
Kant introduced another category of the sublime, the ‘mathematical
sublime’ (Kant 1790/2007) which he distinguished from the dynamic.
The mathematical sublime refers to objects of immense scale, such as the
universe, which initially overwhelm the senses and the capacity of the
human mind to take in and comprehend. The sublime experience occurs in
that moment of immediate exposure and having the senses overwhelmed
but what distinguishes the mathematical sublime from the dynamic is the
capacity of the human mind to find ways of apprehending objects and
phenomena that exceed our experiential sensory capacities. As Kessler
explains, with regard to the example of the universe (in Kant’s time, before
the true scale of the universe beyond the Milky Way was known):
For Kant, there is no reason to believe that this [the end of the Milky Way]
would be the end of the journey, the absolute limit. Rather than the edge of
the universe it is the edge of the human imagination. Reason, though, can
take us still further as it conceives of the infinite. (2012: 49)
Reason, the power of the mind to conceive and make sense of what
exceeds our immediate senses to be able to grasp is the ultimate power of
the sublime for Kant (Kessler 2012: 50). In this idea, we can see a paral-
lel between the sensations of the sublime and the claims to knowledge
of science, and in turn the possibility of science documentary potentially
invoking the mathematical sublime in its depiction and representation of
science. Kessler’s work on images produced for public consumption from
the Hubble Space Telescope suggests that there is a clear set of aesthetic
principles that correspond to the principles of the sublime, traceable from
the reproduction of uses of the sublime in American landscape painting

through photography and into the composition of astronomical images
(2012). Her notion of the ‘astronomical sublime’ (Kessler 2012) is dis-
cussed in more detail and applied to space science documentary in Chap.
3, where much the same kinds of uses of sublime imagery are evident.
Whilst Kant was concerned with vastness as a feature of the mathematical
sublime, the developments in the natural sciences in the centuries since
Kant have identified new boundaries of scale, not just at the large scale,
but also at the scale of the very small. Theoretical physics and cosmology
are currently at a point where understanding the very large increasingly
depends upon trying to understand the very small, the subatomic world
of quantum physics, for instance. Making sense of the microscopic and
subatomic universe, and depicting these on screen arguably also invoke
the mathematical sublime in their efforts to grasp intellectually, visualise
and understand these unseen worlds. An interesting example of this is the
BBC programme Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell (2012), nar-
rated by former Doctor Who actor David Tennant. The narrative of the
programme involves a human cell being invaded by a virus, and amidst a
variety of talking heads pieces with scientists, the central imagery offered
is a fully CGI-rendered depiction of outside and inside human cells, show-
ing proteins, mitochondria, viruses and other microscopic features of cells.
References to science fiction come thick and fast in the opening sequences,
and the visual style involves depicting the environment of cells sitting in a
blue background landscape, with cell nuclei and mitochondria illuminating
the insides of cells, like stars and points of light in a space scene, and with
viruses depicted as angular small black objects, like an invading alien space-
fleet. This cross-referentiality between visual frames from one realm into
another, here from outer space into the microscopic sphere of the human
cell, as well as providing correspondence points for audience engagement
with the environment depicted also invokes notions of the mathematical
sublime, both through association of the imagery with cosmological scale
and also through the authoritative expert framing that shows science’s abil-
ity to grasp intellectually and explain worlds as “alien” as the insides of cells.
The third and final conceptualisation of the sublime that this book
argues is demonstrable across science documentary and factual entertain-
ment is the idea of the ‘technological sublime’ (Marx 1964; Nye 1994).
The technological sublime, as the term suggests, is not linked to natural
phenomena but rather imbues technological development and progress
with what Leo Marx called a ‘rhetoric of the technological sublime’ (Marx
1964: 195). Marx identifies a distinct rhetoric in 19th century America
56 V. CAMPBELL
associated with technologies of development such as the railroad, and

David Nye’s seminal discussion of the ‘American technological sublime’
continues tracing that rhetoric through into the 20th century and the rise
of electrical power, the atomic age (see also Hales 1991 on the ‘atomic
sublime’) and the space race (see also Allen 2009). Aside from the ideolog-
ical associations with American exceptionalism and the idea of American
‘Manifest Destiny’, a broader sense of the positioning of technologies as
sublime objects can be taken from these ideas. Again, one can immediately
begin to see parallels between the aesthetic conceptualisation of technol-
ogy as sublime and conceptualisations of science and scientific knowledge,
as well as with documentary claims to the real. Indeed the use of technolo-
gies for science documentary and factual entertainment exemplifies the
notion of technology as sublime in the way that technologies, allowing
for the production of impossible pictures, themselves are constructed and
represented as sublime. Across the rest of the book, the construction of
the technologies of science and factual entertainment as sublime objects
will be shown to recur across a wide variety of programmes and sciences,
and even in programmes about pseudoscience and popular beliefs, the
trappings of science through technologies frequently appear.
As mentioned earlier, a particularly overt example of the presence of a
technological sublime in factual entertainment programmes has been the
increasing prevalence of forensic sciences within a variety of programme
types. True crime factual programmes themselves, as mentioned in Chap.
1, have been one of the more notable programme formats to adopt fac-
tual entertainment styles and techniques, such as dramatic reenactments of
crimes, use of raw footage from police helicopters, cars and police officers,
as well as crime scene film and photography, and interview and court-
room video. A particular substrand of true crime programmes emerged
in the mid-1990s, with programmes focused solely on criminal forensics,
and constructing their narratives around cases solved through criminal
forensics. Series such as The New Detectives (1996–2005) and Forensic
Files (1996–) have become staple features of factual broadcasting sched-
ules, and dedicated true crime channels, like ID: Investigation Discovery,
are now prevalent parts of the multi-channel landscape. Where these pro-
grammes are particularly interesting for the discussion here is in how they
have evolved something of a symbiotic relationship with fictional crime
genres on television, in ways which not only highlight the importance of
such inter-relationships, but also illustrate the presence of the technologi-
cal sublime in factual entertainment.
Shows likes The New Detectives directly fed into changes in the crime
drama and police procedural television series in the early 2000s through
to the current day. The key series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (USA
2000–), which follows criminal forensic scientists rather than the police
as its main protagonists is reported to have been directly inspired by
The New Detectives. In concentrating on forensics, a significant amount
of dramatic licence was needed to match the often months- and years-
long investigative procedures of forensic science with the dramatic pac-
ing of typical crime dramas. Forensic science documentaries can condense
this time frame by focusing on completed cases, but in drama where the
unfolding of a ‘whodunnit’ is central to the dramatic thrust of the pro-
gramme, forensic procedures needed to be altered to fit the ‘race against
time’ type of scenarios of police procedurals. This didn’t involve just con-
densing time frames, however, as a key innovation of CSI was to make the
forensic procedures and forensic hypotheses components of the dramatic
narratives themselves. In doing this, alongside rock music-scored montage
sequences of crime scene evidence gathering procedures, CGI became a
major tool, routinely used to visualise forensic processes such as using
chemicals to reveal latent fingerprints on objects and illustrate competing
theories of how injuries may have been sustained, such as tracing the path
of a bullet through a body and into vital organs.
Where this gets interesting from the point of view of documentary and
factual entertainment is how the phenomenal success of CSI, leading to two
spin-off series and a host of similarly themed programmes, has fed back into
the form and style of true crime factual series. In particular, the series Crime
360 (2008–) demonstrates how the fictional representations of criminal
forensics have seeped into their depiction in factual programming. Crime
360 is an otherwise typical true crime show, following police officers inves-
tigating major crimes, usually murders, nominally from the moment of the
crime being reported to the arrest of the prime suspect. Where it is distinctive
is in using CGI in key sequences which owe a lot to CSI’s visual style. As well
as more conventional sequences of live-action footage, capturing the police
offices at work, and interviews with forensic experts, witnesses and so on, the
series’ unique selling point signalled by the title relates to a very specific appli-
cation of photorealistic digital imaging technology used by the crime scene
investigative teams themselves. Like programmes in other subcategories of
factual entertainment (see Chap. 5 for example) the series is built around
cases where the investigating teams are using either 3-D laser scanners and/
or 360° digital cameras to capture crime scene information. Both of these
58 V. CAMPBELL
tools produce photorealistic images of crime scenes that can be navigated

around in a computer, and as such can be used as part of the criminal investi-
gation, for instance by comparing a suspect’s account of events with the crime
scene imagery, or to consider the possibility of single or multiple suspects
being sought. Concerns that Wolf (1999) raised about how such computer-
generated simulations standing in for the real might have problematic real
world consequences are entirely unaddressed by the series or by the investi-
gative teams using these tools. Like other criminal investigative techniques
that are, in fact, significantly open to question (such as witness testimony,
fingerprinting and mugshot identification), these new techniques are merely
presented as another, authoritative tool to be used by the police in solving
crimes. As well as using images directly produced by these tools, the series
also engages in some CSI-like additional computer-generated sequences. For
instance, a crime scene image of a victim’s body is reproduced in CGI, shift-
ing from photorealism to invasive surveillance imagery of the body in situ
(see Fig. 2.1). Crime 360 gives the audience a visual spectacle of genuine
criminal forensics techniques but within what has become a highly recogni-
sable representational frame of crime drama, not one of conventional science
documentary. The series could thus, in accordance with typical critiques of
factual entertainment, be criticised for misrepresenting the procedures and
processes of criminal forensics in favour of offering narrative impetus and
Fig. 2.1 Crime 360 (Craig Santy, A&E, 2008)

visual drama, even whilst at the same time asserting an expository position
through its use of CGI contextualised by its other documentary and factual
entertainment representational aspects. Another way of thinking about this,
however, is in terms of how Crime 360 perhaps offers a particularly explicit
construction of criminal forensics within a framework of the technological
sublime. In a long tradition of true crime forensic television programmes, the
narrative closure of solving the crime positions forensics as a technological
solution to social problems. What Crime 360 adds to this idea is a construc-
tion of forensic technologies as capturing, revealing and uncovering the truth
through their capacity for enhanced forms of surveillance and evidentiary
capture, but doing this through a revealing and interesting appropriation of
visual styles from television drama.
How such intersections between scientific modes of representation,
documentary modes of representation, and modes of representation in
popular entertainment and wider popular culture work within other areas
of science is one of this book’s major aims. This chapter has outlined a
conceptual and analytical framework for attempting to make sense of the
interaction between science, documentary and factual entertainment,
with a particular focus on CGI. In order to construct an incisive means
of apprehending the uses of a variety of representational techniques
within contemporary science documentary and factual entertainment,
the chapter began by acknowledging the fundamental challenges to the
epistemological claims of both science and traditional documentary,
before concentrating on analytical approaches to the use of CGI. The
chapter engaged in consideration of a number of issues including CGI
as animation and their mutual relationship to indexical referentiality and
perceptual realism, variations within and tensions between photoreal-
ism and other uses of CGI in the representation of scientific knowledge
and scientific speculation in ‘subjunctive’ documentary, and alternative
frameworks for evaluating the representations produced beyond solely
those of scientific veracity or indexicality, such as a variety of concep-
tions of the sublime. It presented the view that these debates can feed
into a richer and more holistic consideration of contemporary science
programmes on television, in particular the possibility that the con-
struction of scientific objects of study and the actual technologies used
in science (and documentary) might be better understood through a
closer examination of the representational interactions between science,
documentary and entertainment in such programmes. These approaches
will now be applied to a number of different specific sciences across the
60 V. CAMPBELL
remaining chapters of the book, each in turn highlighting distinctive

and illuminating features of the nature of contemporary science, factual
entertainment and television documentary.
REFERENCES
Aldridge, M., & Dingwall, R. (2003). Teleology on television? Implicit models of
evolution in broadcast wildlife and nature programmes. European Journal of
I.B.Tauris.
Bordwell, D. (2009, March 4). Showing what can’t be filmed. Observations on
Film Art. http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2009/03/04/showing-what-
cant-be-filmed/. Accessed 19 July 2012.
Bousé, D. (1998). Are wildlife films really nature documentaries? Critical Studies
in Mass Communication, 15(2), 116–140.
Bousé, D. (2003). False intimacy: Close-ups and viewer involvement in wildlife
films. Visual Studies, 18(2), 123–132.
Burke, E. (1757/1998). A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the
sublime and the beautiful. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Campbell, V. (2006). Science, public relations, and the media: Problems of knowl-
edge and interpretation. In J. L’Etang & M. Pieczka (Eds.), Public relations:
Critical debates and contemporary problems. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
Campbell, V. (2009). The extinct animal show: The paleoimagery tradition and
computer generated imagery in factual television programmes. Public
Understanding of Science, 18(2), 199–213.
Campbell, V. (2014a). Analysing impossible pictures: Computer generated imag-
ery in science documentary and factual entertainment television. In D. Machin
Campbell, V. (2014b). Framing environmental risks and natural disasters in factual
entertainment television. Environmental Communication, 8(1), 58–74.
Chris, C. (2002). All documentary, all the time? Discovery Communications Inc.
and trends in cable television. Television and New Media, 3(1), 7–28.
Cox, B. (2010, December 1). Science—A challenge to TV orthodoxy. Huw
Wheldon lecture 2010. BBC, broadcast.
Daly, N. (2011). The volcanic disaster narrative: From pleasure garden to canvas,
page, and stage. Victorian Studies, 53(2), 255–285.
DelGaudio, S. (1997). If truth be told, can ‘toons tell it? Documentary and anima-
tion’. Film History, 9(2), 189–199.
Dijck, J. V. (2006). Picturizing science : The science documentary as multimedia
spectacle. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 9, 5–24.
Dingwall, R., & Aldridge, M. (2006). Television wildlife programming as a source
of popular scientific information: A case study of evolution. Public Understanding
of Science, 15(2), 131–152.
Dornan, C. (1990). Some problems in conceptualizing the issue of “science and
the media”. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 7(1), 48–71.
Eitzen, D. (2005). Against the ivory tower: An apologia for “popular” historical
documentaries. In A. Rosenthal & J. Corner (Eds.), New challenges for docu-
mentary (2nd ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Fore, S. (2011). Reenacting Ryan: The fantasmatic and the animated documen-
tary. Animation, 6(3), 277–292.
Gaines, J. M. (1999). Introduction: “The real returns”. In J. M. Gaines &
M. Renov (Eds.), Collecting visible evidence. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Gouyon, J.-B. (2011). The BBC Natural History Unit: Instituting natural history
film-making in Britain. History of Science, 49(4), 425–451.
Gunn, J., & Beard, D. E. (2000). On the apocalyptic sublime. Southern
Communication Journal, 65(4), 269–286.
Hales, P. B. (1991). The atomic sublime. American Studies, 32(1), 5–31.
Hight, C. (2008). Primetime digital documentary animation: The photographic
and graphic within play. Studies in Documentary Film, 2(1), 9–31.
Honess Roe, A. (2011). Absence, excess and epistemological expansion: Towards a
framework for the study of animated documentary. Animation, 6(3), 215–230.
Jeffries, M. (2003). BBC natural history versus science paradigms. Science as
Culture, 12(4), 527–545.
Kant, I. (1790/2007). Critique of judgement (trans: Meredith, J. C.). Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Kirby, D. A. (2011). Lab coats in Hollywood: Science, scientists, and cinema.
Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press.
Malitsky, J. (2012). Science and documentary: Unity, indexicality, reality. Journal
of Visual Culture, 11(3), 237–257.
Marx, L. (1964). The machine in the garden: Technology and the pastoral idea in
America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Metz, A. M. (2008). A fantasy made real: The evolution of the subjunctive
documentary on US cable science channels. Television and New Media, 9(1),
333–348.
Minh-Ha, T. T. (1993). The totalizing quest of meaning. In M. Renov (Ed.),
Theorizing documentary. London: Routledge.
62 V. CAMPBELL
Mitman, G. (1999). Reel nature: America’s romance with wildlife on film.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Moran, J. (1999). A bone of contention: Documenting the prehistoric subject. In
J. M. Gaines & M. Renov (Eds.), Collecting visible evidence. Minneapolis:
Nasim, O. W. (2011). The “Landmark” and “Groundwork” of stars: John
Herschel, photography and the drawing of nebulae. Studies in History and
Philosophy of Science, 42(1), 67–84.
Nichols, B. (2008). Documentary reenactment and the fantasmic subject. Critical
Inquiry, 3(1), 72–89.
University Press.
Prince, S. (1996). True lies: Perceptual realism, digital images, and film theory.
Film Quarterly, 49(3), 27–37.
Prince, S. (2012). Digital visual effects in cinema: The seduction of reality. New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Rosteck, T., & Frentz, T. S. (2009). Myth and multiple readings in environmental
rhetoric: The case of an inconvenient truth. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 95(1),
1–19.
Rozenkrantz, J. (2011, May 6). Colourful claims: Towards a theory of animated
documentary. Film International. http://filmint.nu/?p=1809. Accessed 19
July 2012.
Scott, K. D., & White, A. M. (2003). Unnatural history? Deconstructing the walk-
ing with dinosaurs phenomenon. Media, Culture and Society, 25(3), 315–332.
Shaw, P. (2006). The sublime. London: Routledge.
Silverstone, R. (1986). The agnostic narratives of television science. In J. Corner
(Ed.), Documentary and the mass media. London: Edward Arnold.
Silverstone, R. (1999). Rhetoric, play, performance: Revisiting a study of the mak-
ing of a BBC documentary. In J. Gripsrud (Ed.), Television and common knowl-
edge. London: Routledge.
Strøm, G. (2003). The animated documentary. Animation Journal, 11, 46–63.
Ward, P. (2005). Documentary: The margins of reality. London: Wallflower Press.
Wells, P. (1997). The beautiful village and the true village: A consideration of ani-
mation and the documentary aesthetic. In P. Wells (Ed.), Art and Animation.
Oxford: John Wiley.
Wheatley, H. (2004). The limits of television?: Natural history programming and
the transformation of public service broadcasting. European Journal of Cultural
Studies, 7(3), 325–339.
CHAPTER 3
Space Sciences: Wonders of the Cosmos
INTRODUCTION
A fitting place to start a discussion of particular sciences and their depic-
tion in contemporary science documentary and factual entertainment
television is the space sciences. The space sciences have had a profound
impact on the politico-economic and socio-cultural global environment
since the end of World War II and the beginning of the space race, pro-
ducing some of the most iconic imagery of our age, such as the ‘Earthrise’
photograph taken by Apollo VIII astronaut Bill Anders in 1968 (Allen
2009: 132–134), the subsequent television images of the Moon Landings,
Hubble Space Telescope images (Kessler 2012) and images from probes
and robots sent to other planets and moons and to the edges of the solar
system. At the time of writing, NASA’s New Horizons probe has just
flown past Pluto, the last of the traditional planets (now classified as a
dwarf planet) to be visited by a space probe, sending back the first detailed
images of Pluto, completing the ‘set’ of traditional planets. Visual tech-
nologies in many ways have their roots in the space sciences—astronomer
John Herschel coined the term ‘photography’ for instance (Kessler 2012:
71)—and, as in some other sciences, a constant awareness of the interrela-
tionship between the underlying science and public interest and enthusi-
asm for space science imagery has made the space sciences one of the most
deliberately visual of sciences, in terms of public outreach. Alongside the
space sciences, the growth of science fiction through the twentieth cen-
tury in particular, coming to be one of the dominant popular genres of our

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-38538-3_3
64 V. CAMPBELL
time, particularly in terms of film and television, has made contemporary

visual culture replete with a huge range of fictional images of space. Whilst
science fiction in art, literature, film and television has attracted a notable
scholarly tradition, it is quite remarkable how little work has been done on
space sciences in documentary and factual entertainment. Indeed, astro-
nomical imaging in general has generated little critical scrutiny (Greenberg
2004; Snider 2011). In one of the few studies to have explored in detail
the relationship between film, television and the space sciences, Allen has
investigated the relationship between the media and the space sciences,
highlighting how photographic, film and video cameras were an intrinsic
part of the space race (2009). They note that the images produced:
Were initially presented to the global community as icons of political

propaganda, popular entertainment, scientific achievement and techno-
logical advancement, but soon gained additional meanings as symbols of
ecological concern, religious significance and the modern sublime. (Allen
2009: vii–viii)
It’s not as if space science documentaries and television programmes have

been few and far between, with little impact or merit warranting critical
interest. The Sky at Night remains one of the longest, continually running
television shows anywhere in the world, and series like Sagan’s Cosmos
have become canonical, almost legendary exemplars of television quality.
In today’s multi-channel environment, space science programmes feature
as heavily as natural history programmes, modern history programmes,
and the other scientific areas discussed in this book and yet, such pro-
grammes have rarely featured in critical appraisals of the mediation of
space, or mediation of the space sciences. In terms of the concerns of
this book, space sciences offer an excellent opportunity to interrogate the
relationships between representational trends in space sciences themselves,
within documentaries and factual entertainment programmes on space sci-
ences, and how representations of space in popular culture contribute to
how the space sciences are depicted in such programmes. Whilst space sci-
ence programmes have yet to utilise factual entertainment techniques such
as dramatisation or hybridised reality formats systematically, in other ways
they embody some of the concerns of critics about the shift from science
documentary to science factual entertainment television. In particular, the
use of CGI has become routine, overt and a significant feature of space
science programmes today, and in the different ways CGI is used, the
SPACE SCIENCES: WONDERS OF THE COSMOS 65
intersections between uses of visual technologies in science and in factual

entertainment television begin to be revealed.
Superficially, space science programmes might seem to have amongst
the strongest claims to ‘proper’ documentary status, despite the wide-
spread use of CGI in their depictions of space, because of the close associa-
tion between the processes of modern astronomical imaging and CGI. Just
as photography and astronomy developed in close relationship, CGI has
close associations with astronomy as well. The gradual replacement of
analogue photography with charge-coupled devices (CCDs) and simi-
lar technologies that capture, store and produce images digitally became
widespread first in professional astronomy in the 1980s, later moving into
photography and cinematography. Digital astronomical imaging technol-
ogy not only enabled space probes to send back images from distant plan-
ets and moons with data of scientific value, and enhance telescope images,
but also provided images that could be easily edited and manipulated to
generate ‘pretty pictures’ for public consumption (Lynch and Edgerton
1988; Kessler 2011). As well as still images, space agencies like NASA have
a tradition of producing films of missions including traditional animations,
sometimes in wireframe style such as in showing the Voyager probes’ ‘Grand
Tour’ to the outer planets or the stages of the Saturn V rocket as seen in
Moonwalk One (1970). Digital animation followed, and coming from the
space agencies and scientists themselves, a body of authoritative digitally
animated material began to appear that served the interests of factual televi-
sion, particularly as digital animations began to move away from wireframe
symbolic expositional CGI towards ever more photorealistic graphic verité-
style sequences. As CGI has increasingly spread through factual television,
bespoke CGI sequences going beyond official animations and simulations
in terms of graphical complexity are much more prevalent today, and are
also being used to depict scenes as yet uncaptured by space science missions,
including phenomena that aren’t possible to capture through conven-
tional astrophotography. Graphic verité CGI sequences of cosmological
objects now dominate many space science programmes, accompanied by
symbolic expositional sequences and invasive surveillance too when pro-
grammes shift from cosmological objects, through the microscope and
into the arena of quantum physics. In a sequence in Cosmos: A Spacetime
Odyssey, for example, host Neil DeGrasse Tyson flies a ‘ship of the imagi-
nation’ into the microscopic world of a drop of water on a plant, looking
at microscopic lifelike tardigrades, before shrinking down further still to
fly along strands of DNA.
66 V. CAMPBELL
Nonetheless, despite these shifts into the subjunctive, amongst the

other traditional documentary claims to the real used by these pro-
grammes such as expert commentary and sequences of technology, labo-
ratories and so on, space science programmes centre their visual claims to
the real particularly strongly in relation to their use of imagery derived
from professional astronomical imaging. Interestingly, though, scholars
who have explored the historical development and processes of the pro-
duction of astronomical images, particularly those for public consump-
tion, have shown how it is underpinned not solely by scientific principles
but also intrinsically by ‘aesthetic judgements’ (Snider 2011: 9). Indeed,
given the degree of construction, mediation and aesthetic choices involved
in the production of digital astronomical images, it is possible to trace a
line back to the conventions of astronomical drawing (Snider 2011: 13)
which in turn set the parameters for the conventions and expectations of
astrophotography (Nasim 2011: 70). As well as the emergence of a set of
conventions for public display of astronomical images, it is also possible to
identify distinctive ideological positions underpinning their production at
particular times, such as evidence of colonial and imperialist attitudes in
the aesthetic depiction of Southern Hemisphere skies by European astron-
omers (Schaffer 1998), or the influence of American ‘Manifest Destiny’ in
imagery of the space race and the manned lunar missions (Sage 2008). In
critiquing the production and reception of different kinds of astronomical
images, scholars have noted a number of dimensions that need to be taken
into account, and these are summed up neatly by Snider who states:
Astronomical images are always constructed, whether through drawing,

photography, or digital image processing. In the process of constructing
these images, astronomers make significant aesthetic decisions, though the
context of the images dictates the aesthetic paradigms they employ. In con-
junction with these aesthetic decisions, astronomers make significant rhe-
torical decisions about audience, purpose and context[.] (2011: 8)
Such work has expressed concerns about the end products of such pro-
cesses, particularly images produced for public consumption, due to the
‘black-boxing’ of image production processes, not explaining how images
are created rather than captured, leading audiences to see such images as
‘scientific rather than aesthetic’ (Greenberg 2004: 84). By not explain-
ing their construction, concern is raised over how images may be open
to unscientific interpretations, such as religious symbols being seen in
astronomical images (Greenberg 2004), and also how the elision of their
constructed nature inappropriately enables a view of astronomical ‘images
as natural representations of visual reality’ to become ‘further entrenched
in popular discourses’ (Snider 2011: 8). For other scholars, the aesthetic
strategies used reflect a demonstrable lineage in the traditions of astro-
nomical imagery stretching back through the Romantic Sublime tradition
in art and photography (Sage 2008; Kessler 2012), visually constructing
space in terms of both the Burkean dynamic sublime and the Kantian
mathematical sublime with concomitant potential implications for the
ideological framing of space (Sage 2008). How some of those aesthetic
processes and decisions from astronomical imaging interact, both visually
and narratively, with aesthetic influences from documentary and space in
screen fiction in the context of space science factual television programmes
are the central concerns of this chapter.
VISUALISING SPACE: DIFFRACTION SPIKES, LENS FLARES

AND CANDY APPLE NEON
To begin the consideration of these relationships in space science television

programmes, it is useful to focus on three particular and recurring visual
tropes: one drawn directly from astronomical imaging, one from docu-
mentary cinematography and the third combining features of astronomical
imaging and screen fiction aesthetics. Consideration of each of these begins
to reveal the complexities of the representations of the space sciences in
factual entertainment television, as well as signals some of the key claims
of this book about the relationships between science, documentary and
popular culture, inflected in particular ways in particular sciences. The first
of these tropes are diffraction spikes in the depiction of stars, slight visual
effects in and of themselves but highly indicative of these interrelations
between astronomical image processes and popular culture. The opening
title sequence of How the Universe Works (2010) includes these, and they
appear with a degree of regularity across episodes of The Universe (2007–),
Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking (2010) and other programmes as
well. Journey to the Edge of the Universe (2008), for instance, stops at one
point on its journey at the Pleiades, the seven sisters regularly featured
in such programmes, and shown here with clear diffraction spikes. When
viewed from Earth with the naked eye, stars appear to twinkle and flicker,
thus leading to the convention of drawing stars with spikes, as seen in a con-
ventionally animated sequence in Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey recounting
68 V. CAMPBELL
Giordano Bruno’s views of the scale of the universe. When viewed through
reflector telescopes in particular, the arms holding the secondary mirror
component of the telescope diffract the light from incoming stars produc-
ing a series of spikes in the images of stars, not unlike the twinkle effect and
which are popular with audiences (Kessler 2007: 488). Diffraction spikes
are not normally produced by other types of telescopes and with the adap-
tive optics of modern large telescopes can be removed entirely, but it is
not uncommon for images of stars produced for public display to have
them retained, enhanced or even added in due to their popularity (Kessler
2012: 164). As such it is no surprise to see them appear in space science
programmes as well, as they have become an evidently normalised visual
artefact of astronomical imagery—but they are an artefact nonetheless, and
as such their reproduction in CGI involves the reproduction of an aesthetic
choice not a natural reality of the objects depicted even though it’s a depic-
tion culturally accepted as an ‘authentic’ one, corresponding to a percep-
tual expectation of twinkling stars.
The second visual trope is another seemingly small but actually highly
indicative feature that has become essentially ubiquitous in space science
programmes that offer images of space—the routine use of lens flare. Lens
flare is the phenomenon whereby light entering the camera lens at cer-
tain angles bounces around inside the lens apparatus, causing a series of
echoes of the light source cascading across the images captured. In classi-
cal photography, lens flares were regarded as ruining pristine images, and
similarly in classical cinematography, lens flare and other techniques that
might draw attention to the presence of the camera, such as movements
of hand-held cameras or rack focusing (where the focus shifts within the
duration of shot), were seen as problematic for the maintenance of suspen-
sion of disbelief, drawing attention to the filmed nature of what was being
depicted; human eyes don’t produce the same visual effects after all. In
the New Hollywood cinema of the early 1970s, however, lens flares began
to be deliberately used alongside other techniques by a range of filmmak-
ers like Terrence Malick, director of Badlands (1973), to suggest a more
naturalistic style through reproducing the techniques of direct cinema and
cinema verité documentarians of the 1960s and 1970s (Turnock 2012:
161). Shaky hand-held camera shots, sudden focus pulls and shots with
lens flare in them gave documentaries and then subsequently fiction films a
sense of authenticity through their foregrounding of cinematographic tech-
niques, and the immediacy of apparent presence—not the ‘invisible camera’
of earlier cinematic approaches but one clearly ‘there’ in the scene. Turnock
argues further that the adoption of these techniques as part of the spe-
cial effects used in science fiction films that immediately followed the New
Hollywood cinema, films such as Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third
Kind and Lucas’ Star Wars (both 1977), subsequently set the precedent
for a cinematographic sense of realism, thus photorealism, being associated
with techniques such as lens flare in the evolution of visual effects in cinema
(including the rise of CGI). As a result of the subsequent dominance of
companies like Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) in setting the standards
of cinematic visual effects’ ‘realist’ aesthetics, lens flares in particular ‘have
now evolved into a stylistic cue associated with or prompting a sense of
immediate docurealism, and in fact have become the go-to additive element
to the mise-en-scène in contemporary special effects to cue a photorealistic
aesthetic’ (Turnock 2012: 161 original emphasis). So pervasive is this ‘ILM
version’ today that JJ Abrams’ first Star Trek film (2009), for instance, was
widely criticised for what was seen as an excessive use of the technique as
it has now become a rather over-familiar visual trope in screen science fic-
tion (Turnock 2012: 161). All of the factual entertainment and documen-
tary programmes considered in this chapter feature images with lens flares,
including lens flares reproduced in CGI. Because you need ‘a camera lens to
“see” a lens flare’ (Turnock 2012: 162), this then is not a straightforward
case of graphic verité used as a form of perceptual realism, so photorealis-
tic that even the aberrations of the camera are reproduced. Rather, it’s an
example of how a visual technique shifts from documentary, through screen
fiction into special effects and then back into factual entertainment, all the
while being essentially a trope of realism that is in effect an artefact of imag-
ing technology. A CGI sequence in Wonders of the Universe (2011) where
a star explodes into a supernova, for example, manages to combine images
of diffraction spikes and lens flares alongside camera wobble and even star-
dust on the lens, all being used as markers of authenticity and verisimilitude
within the graphic verité CGI. Yet at the same time all of those individual
elements reflect particular mediated tropes emerging from the aesthetics of
astronomical imaging, documentary and screen fiction. Lens flare features
continually in space science programmes, not least as a result of a persistent
feature of camera movement and navigation around space.
The third trope to be considered here really begins to open up these
programmes for critical scrutiny of their visual framing of space and the
space sciences, and concerns their use of light and colour, reflecting the
interplay between the emergent conventions of colour in astronomi-
cal imaging on the one hand, and colour in screen fiction depictions of
70 V. CAMPBELL
space on the other. The original adoption of docurealist techniques like

lens flare in science fiction films like those of Lucas and Spielberg in the
1970s, in ways so influential today for the visual design of space science
factual programmes, was to offset the then established visual aesthetic of
screen science fiction which was full of what special effects artists in the
1970s referred to as the ‘candy apple neon’ look, with photography domi-
nated by ‘highly reflective surfaces, a busy and buzzing mise-en-scène,
and neon-light traced accents’ (Turnock 2012: 163). Bukatman (2003)
associates this kind of use of light and colour in science fiction films like
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) with Romantic Sublime aesthetic techniques
relating to light and scale, as well as to notions of the technological sub-
lime (returned to later in the chapter). Techniques like lens flare were used
by directors such as George Lucas in part to offer a more realistic ‘used
future’ look (Turnock 2012: 163) as a counterpoint to the ‘candy apple
neon’ and kaleidoscopic light shows prominent in screen science fiction,
though those elements have persisted alongside the ‘realist’ techniques.
Paralleling this developing pattern of the use of colour and light in screen
fiction, even before digital imaging technologies became dominant in the
production of astronomical images, there was a clear differentiation in the
way astronomical images were produced and used when comparing pro-
fessional astronomers to the wider public in terms of the extent and nature
of the use of colour (Lynch and Edgerton 1988; Greenberg 2004; Snider
2011; Kessler 2011, 2012). Astronomers would often look at astronomi-
cal images in negative form, as spotting black dots on a backlit white back-
ground is far easier when done by hand than searching for white spots on
a black background, and image quality is determined primarily by the par-
ticular analytical needs of the images, rather than their aesthetics. Images
produced for the public, on the other hand, are considered more fully in
terms of aesthetic quality, such as orientation and framing, and particularly
in terms of colour (Greenberg 2004; Kessler 2007, 2012; Snider 2011).
Some natural colours of astronomical objects are possible to capture
through conventional telescopes but typically both a range of physical fil-
ters on telescopes and filter effects in digital image processing software, as
well as techniques like compositing, are used to enhance natural colours,
contrast and so on (Kessler 2012: 164). As telescopes have increasingly
looked beyond the visual spectrum, looking into the infrared, ultraviolet,
x-ray and gamma ray parts of the spectrum, as well as beginning to examine
aspects of space that don’t interact with light in conventional ways, such
as dark matter, astronomers have increasingly applied artistic licence in
their use of colour to represent material within visual images, such as using
specific colours to denote the presence of particular elements. In doing
so, scholars have noted how astronomical imaging often involves the use
of both conventional colour palettes, though used ‘more freely, even gra-
tuitously, for popularised images’ (Lynch and Edgerton 1988: 194) but
also ‘false colour schemes’, that is ‘colour palettes that diverge from what
astronomers conceive of as an object’s intrinsic colours’ (Snider 2011: 9,
following Lynch and Edgerton 1988). A key basis for colour schemes and
the use of light in astronomical images for public consumption is, again,
demonstrably the artistic tradition of the sublime. This can be traced both
through analysis of images themselves, such as Hubble Space Telescope
images (Greenberg 2004; Kessler 2007, 2012; Snider 2011), and through
the implicit and explicit statements of astronomers responsible for the pro-
duction of images for public consumption (Lynch and Edgerton 1988;
Kessler 2012). It is worth noting, as an aside, that today these techniques
are open to amateur astronomers as well, both using their own telescopes
and imaging software. Even original raw data from space missions are now
available for amateurs to use and produce their own images (Gater 2015).
One amateur creator of images also explicitly linked his approach to that
of the Romantic Sublime tradition, saying:
I just try and make pretty pictures… I’m a big fan of Ansel Adams and
Albert Bierstadt, these painters and photographers who took the landscapes
of the American West and just made them look “wow” gorgeous. (Atkinson
in Gater 2015: 45)
The identification of a clear lineage from artists of the American Romantic

Sublime like ‘Hudson River School’ artist Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902),
through the landscape photography of Ansel Adams (1902–1984), to
the space art of figures of Chesley Bonestall (1888–1986) is thus rec-
ognised quite clearly amongst producers of astronomical images both
professional and amateur, and is not just the preserve of analysts (Sage
2008; Kessler 2012).
The Romantic Sublime approach to the use of colour and light in astro-
nomical images, sometimes referred to as a ‘Luminist’ approach, which
denotes ‘the use of light effects to convey an impression of natural grandeur
and awe’ (Sage 2008: 31), arguably converges with the ‘candy apple neon’
of sublime imagery in screen science fiction in the representation of space
in factual entertainment programmes and documentary. The Universe, for
72 V. CAMPBELL
instance, offers a view of the universe that is in glorious multi-coloured

hues, whether at the level of subatomic particles in the early stages of the
Big Bang, or on the scale of planets, solar systems and galaxies. One image
of the Voyager space probe in the episode ‘Secrets of the Space Probes’,
for example, depicts it against a vibrant star field in hues of bright blue, red
and purple. How the Universe Works uses a similar colour palette, such as in
the episode ‘Galaxies’ where a sequence flying through the Eagle Nebula
is a deep red colour, and brilliant whites of galaxies mix with strong reds
and blues of stars and other nebulae. The colours of stars across most of
these programmes are also vibrant with the reds and blues of giant and
dwarf stars, and even the environs of black holes shown in vivid colours,
such as the jets of radiation streaming from them. Our own Sun is regu-
larly depicted in incandescent, radiating yellow/orange colours although
in fact if viewed outside of our atmosphere the Sun would actually look
white to human eyes; it is a ‘yellow’ star by classification more than actual
appearance. So, in some of the uses of colour and light there is a pay-off
between the scientific reality of astronomical objects with popular under-
standing/expectation, as well as evidence of the aesthetic influences of
astronomical imaging and screen science fiction.
The depiction of technology will be discussed later in the chapter,
but in the context of the use of colour, it is noticeable how space probes
and spaceships are also often depicted in a ‘candy apple neon’ style, all
bright, reflective surfaces, often gleaming gold, white, or with flashes of
light from solar panels reflecting the Sun’s rays. Imaginary spaceships are
shown in programmes like The Universe and Into the Universe with Stephen
Hawking typically again as sleek, brightly coloured and/or brightly lit
vehicles zooming through the cosmos. The ‘ship of the imagination’ in
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is a silver-chrome craft that continually shines
with the reflected light of objects it flies past, and the series in general
offers a strident use of colour from its opening sequences onwards. This
isn’t a uniform approach, however, with Human Universe (2014) offer-
ing an interesting variation on this imagery of spacecraft. Whilst it shows
the International Space Station (ISS) arguably in the ‘candy apple neon’
style, the series depicts the Voyager probe more obliquely: smaller and not
centred in the frame, mostly in shadow, against a far fainter and distant star
field, as melancholy music plays whilst presenter Brian Cox considers the
likelihood of contacting/discovering alien life rather more pessimistically
than in some of the other programmes.
Human Universe, like Cox’s earlier series Wonders of the Solar System
(2010) and Wonders of the Universe, has a tendency to use a colour palette
that is more muted and naturalistic than some of the other programmes
considered here. Nonetheless Cox’s series do share, and arguably exem-
plify as much as any other programme considered here, another feature
of the use of colour that is evident even within attempts at a superficially
more naturalistic use of colour. A feature of the use of colour that only
becomes evident when comparing different programmes is the extent to
which programmes create their own distinctive palettes. In other words,
programmes construct their own colour key, if you like, that they draw on
and reproduce across the different kinds of objects and imagery that they
include. Wonders of the Universe, for instance, often offers subtle colour
pattern matches between images of Cox in exotic locations on Earth, such
as a sunset on a tropical beach, with astronomical images of the Milky
Way both sharing subtle blues and reds (sky and Sun on Earth, different
star types in the galaxy) against the wispy grey of clouds (either in the sky
or in the arms of the spiral galaxy). Whilst these effects are arguably less
overt and more naturalistic than the more ‘candy apple neon’ approach
of series like The Universe or Cosmos, they nonetheless demonstrate the
visual construction of astronomical imagery within, consciously or other-
wise, aesthetic sensibilities of images of space. Where this is most evident
is in efforts to depict astronomical phenomena that can’t be captured
through conventional visual means, producing unquestionably subjunc-
tive imagery, with perhaps the best example of this being dark matter.
Dark matter isn’t just dark in the common-sense notion of not giving off
light, but actually does not interact with light at all and for a long time
could only be inferred based on galaxies not containing enough visible
matter to retain their form. A key computer simulation experiment, fea-
turing regularly across these programmes, revealed that only dark matter
produces universes like our own in structure. That simulation shows dark
matter as deep-violet-hued filaments along which galactic super-clusters
are formed, and has served as the basis for a general use of a deep vio-
let colour to represent dark matter in space science programmes. There
are rare variations of this, such as in the How the Universe Works episode
‘Galaxies’ which has one brief sequence showing dark matter as a deep
grey-green and black checkerboard-type effect overlaid on an image of a
galaxy, though later in the same episode the violet for dark matter consen-
sus colour palette is reproduced.
74 V. CAMPBELL
THE MAGISTERIAL GAZE AND THE GRAND TOUR

These visual tropes from astronomical imaging, cinematographic visual
effects and Romantic Sublime aesthetics combine into persistent visual
and narrative framing of space in the space science factual entertainment
programmes discussed here. A further aesthetic feature of the Romantic
Sublime is what is referred to as the ‘Magisterial Gaze’ or ‘Olympian per-
spective’ (Sage 2008: 32). Essentially this involves ‘seeing the landscape
from an elevated perspective’ where ‘the viewer assumes a Godlike gaze’
over the scene depicted (Sage 2008: 32). This can be contrasted within
Romantic Sublime artworks, with a ‘more reverential upwards gaze towards
the divine’ (Sage 2008: 32). It might initially seem obvious that space sci-
ence programmes might contain imagery of the latter; indeed it might seem
intrinsic to the notion of astronomical imaging to be looking up at the sky,
at objects above us (at least experientially speaking from our point of ori-
entation). Also, images from space, such as those from the ISS, the Apollo
missions and so on, clearly intrinsically involve a Magisterial Gaze of the
Earth at least, some of which have become signature images of our age as
mentioned earlier (Allen 2009: 132). It is interesting to note, however, how
these perspectives, particularly a Magisterial Gaze, are repeatedly offered
by these programmes not just in their visual positioning of astronomical
objects but also in terms of other kinds of objects, such as subatomic par-
ticles, the technologies of space sciences, and even sometimes in the framing
of scientists and programme presenters. In turn, this visual point of view
expands into how the camera moves through space, and contributes to the
overarching narrative structures of some of these programmes.
Scientists and presenters themselves are often visually framed in a man-
ner that would be recognisable to the Romantic Sublime painters. Actor
Sam Neill who hosts Space (2000), for instance, is shown in several of his
linking presentation sequences wandering around hilly landscapes with an
antique telescope, often against a setting Sun and darkening sky. Brian
Cox is routinely shot in the same way throughout Wonders of the Solar
System, Wonders of the Universe and Human Universe. Sometimes these
shots show the presenters from below, both camera and presenter look-
ing up at the sky and the stars in a reverential gaze. On other occasions
though, shots display epic landscapes with the presenter and the landscape
shot from above—quite often an aerial camera shot. In the Wonders of
the Universe episode ‘Falling’, Cox’s discussion of the nature gravity and
spacetime showing how space is curved, with hills and valleys carved out
by the gravitational pull of different astronomical bodies, is visually illus-

trated by him standing on a mountain peak, with an aerial camera shot
pulling out to show him as a small speck against the mountain range.
Similar shots of him walking on glaciers, in the Namib desert, or canoeing
near Niagara Falls, all pull out to an aerial wide-shot very clearly convey-
ing a Magisterial Gaze. Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s ‘ship of the imagination’
explicitly positions him as able to transition between a downwards gaze
to the cosmological past, an upwards gaze to the future, and a horizontal
gaze for the present. The movement of the ship around, over, under, into
and through objects constantly shifts this perspective, but always seems to
retain a notion of authoritative gaze over the images being shown.
A predominantly Magisterial Gaze, sometimes shifting between that
and a reverential gaze, is presented by these programmes regardless of
the scale of the astronomical object. Images of Earth from space, both
those captured by astronauts and satellites and CGI, share a common
Magisterial Gaze with the Earth in the bottom of the frame, sometimes in
silhouette or in phase, with camera movement producing lens flares as the
Sun appears over the horizon. Sometimes the Moon is included in such
shots, sometimes spacecraft like the ISS, but this positioning of the planet
viewed from above is widespread. A similar framing occurs with regard to
the Milky Way, often with the camera either zooming directly out of the
plane of the galaxy, from the position of our solar system to a point clearly
above the galaxy showing its spiral nature, or sometimes flying across the
galactic plane, more often than not from below to above, again to reveal
the spiral of the galaxy. Of course, these images are entirely computer-
generated and, in that sense therefore, subjunctive. We are in the galaxy
and are unable to see it from outside (indeed, there are continuing debates
about the exact structure, such as how many arms there are in the spiral,
whether the galaxy is essentially a flattened spiral, whether there are ripples
along the arms, etc.). As mentioned earlier, the specific colour palettes of
programmes are evident by comparison here, as the Milky Way in How
the Universe Works, for example, looks different to how it is rendered in
Wonders of the Universe, and in turn, even though the programme shares
a presenter and producer, the Milky Way in Human Universe is subtly dif-
ferent again. Variations in the colour of stars and of the clouds denoting
the spiral arms result in depictions that are all really quite different, whilst
within the broad parameters of showing something corresponding to
astronomical images of other galaxies, though these are also products of
judgements over light and colour (Kessler 2007). As the imagery extends
76 V. CAMPBELL
into objects not captured by astronomical imaging, a Magisterial Gaze

persists despite significant variations in colour palettes, such as in the
imaging of black holes in programmes like Wonders of the Universe, Cosmos
and Strip the Cosmos (2014).
A second dimension to this tendency for a Magisterial Gaze is the persis-
tence of what could be called a ‘Grand Tour’ framing of space. The Grand
Tour was the name given to a voyage around Europe, typically taken by
privileged elites in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, taking in all of
the great locations for art and architecture. The journeys of the Voyager
probes in the 1970s were also described as going on a Grand Tour, as they
took advantage of a rare alignment of the outer planets that allowed them
to skip from one planet to another, through getting a gravitational sling-
shot from each planet onto the next. As already mentioned, the Voyager
probes feature regularly in these programmes, and have been subject to
their own dedicated programmes but more generally the idea of a Grand
Tour of the solar system and the wider cosmos has been used as a narra-
tive framework in many of the programmes considered here. Within that
narrative notable recurring visual tropes and framing of space are evident
across these programmes as well.
The Grand Tour in effect is constructed across these programmes into
three distinct phases starting with a terrestrial origin and looking into space,
then touring the solar system, and finally into deep space back to the dawn
of the cosmos and the Big Bang. Journey to the Edge of the Universe offers
perhaps the most obvious version of this three-stage Grand Tour, but it is
evident in other programmes and series as well. The first stage often begins
with, or involves an Earthbound setting, such as cliffs in Cosmos, and regu-
larly uses imagery of a campfire. Neill, Cox and Tyson all sit beside a camp-
fire at some point in their respective series. The very first episode of The
Universe also starts with imagery of a campfire, and Journey to the Edge of
the Universe starts with a campfire on a beach at night, and a couple looking
up at the stars. Sometimes the campfire image is narratively associated with
ancient peoples and their attempts to make sense of and measure the stars,
with ancient monuments and beliefs often a feature of these programmes,
such as the Chankillo solar calendar in Wonders of the Universe and Tyson
reviewing different mythologies of the Pleiades from besides a campfire
in Cosmos. Sometimes campfires are used, alongside ancient technologies
and beliefs, to position the development of human knowledge and tech-
nology along a continuum of perceived progress of understanding of the
universe. This is a central narrative framework of Cox’s Human Universe
series, and the episode ‘Ape-man to Spaceman’ has this explicitly in its title.
Cosmos takes a different approach with key moments of historical discovery
depicted in animated dramatised reenactments (stylistically not far removed
from the Disneyland programmes of the 1950s) and Tyson’s explanatory
narration offering an overarching narrative of an historical journey towards
ever greater knowledge of space. Such series, however, reflect little of the
philosophical, sociological and historical critiques of a notion of the history
of science as a history of great thinkers (with concomitant problems of eth-
nicity, gender, class and nationality). Some attempts to acknowledge and
incorporate the contributions of women and non-Western thinkers and
address the geopolitical context are apparent on occasion, but the more
fundamental critique of the complexities and socially situated nature of
scientific progress is essentially ignored in favour of establishing and follow-
ing a simple yet dominant narrative of the understanding of the cosmos.
Tales of genius from Galileo to Hawking either clearly underpin the topics
under discussion or serve as the primary object of discussion. Either way,
the notion of a journey of progress—from campfires to space probes—and
the advancement of knowledge predominates, displaying another feature
of the sublime perspective.
The second stage of the Grand Tour leaves Earth and generally focuses
on the solar system. Some programmes are centred only on the solar sys-
tem (The Planets (1999), Wonders of the Solar System, the first series of The
Universe), whilst others spend some time in the solar system but then move
far beyond it. A noticeable feature of depictions of the solar system is a
particular visual trope of the rapid zoom both in and out of the solar sys-
tem, usually from a Magisterial Gaze perspective flying over the planets, and
sometimes through the Oort cloud, Kuiper belt and asteroid belt. There is
an invocation of great scale here, showing how the solar system cannot be
contained in a single frame so the spectator has to be moved through the
space depicted to see everything, paralleling the scale of some of the land-
scape sublime paintings (Bukatman 2003: 98–99), whilst at the same time
offering a Magisterial Gaze suggesting a capacity to navigate that space. As
well as the influence of landscape sublime art here, screen science fiction is
arguably also invoked. Brannon Braga, a producer on Star Trek: The Next
Generation (1987–1994), was also an executive producer on Cosmos, and
there are clear parallels in the opening sequences of the two series. Star
Trek: The Next Generation’s opening sequence includes panning shots of
planets, comets and Magisterial Gaze images of a proto-planetary disc, with
several other science fiction television programmes and films having similar
78 V. CAMPBELL
tour sequences (for instance, popular sitcom The Big Bang Theory (2007-)
uses this imagery in its opening credits). Space science factual entertain-
ment programmes persist with the Grand Tour not just as a particular visual
sequence but also as a narrative structure both within individual episodes
and, in some cases, as a series structure. The planetary Grand Tour parallels,
to some extent, the degree to which the planets have been visited by space
probes, with much more time spent on those planets with many probes (like
Mars) and less on those with fewer probes (like Neptune). Similarly other
solar system objects are treated largely in relation to the level of scientific
engagement with them—so comets feature a bit more prominently than
the asteroid belt—and some planetary moons are covered in great detail
where they have interesting features, like Europa’s possible ocean, Titan’s
methane seas, and volcanoes on Io and Triton, over and above other moons
and even planets (Mercury, for instance). Within the planetary Grand Tour
narrative, the issue of the possibility of life on other worlds and comparisons
between conditions on Earth and elsewhere is also predominant.
The visual depictions of the planetary tours involve quite simple zooms
from one planet to the next, as if in an imaginary spacecraft. Cosmos’ ‘ship
of the imagination’ does literally fly through the solar system, down near
the surface of Mars, tracked across the sky by a Mars rover, then zooming
through the rings of Saturn before flying alongside Voyager (see Fig. 3.1).
The Universe also sometimes depicts an imaginary spaceship zooming
Fig. 3.1 Cosmos A Spacetime Odyssey (Brannon Braga, Fox, 2014)

between the planets, but even where no actual spaceship is depicted, the
imagery gives the suggestion of movement through space. The science fic-
tion trope of background stars moving against the foregrounded spaceship
is used in many programmes, even where in reality movements within the
solar system, even at speed, wouldn’t result in noticeable shifts in the very
distant star-field background. Voyager’s speed, for instance, is a difficult
one to visualise because of this. It is the fastest moving object humans
have ever made, but whilst some programmes depict it against a backdrop
of streaming stars, others try different techniques such as Cosmos showing
it against the rubble of the Kuiper belt. The rapid zooms between plan-
ets used in many programmes involve impossible simulated speeds well
beyond light speed, travelling between Mars and Jupiter say in seconds,
and this jars somewhat with efforts in narration to begin to convey notions
of increasing scale and distance that become important as the Grand Tour
continues into the third phase. In Journey to the Edge of the Universe, for
example, scenes of Jupiter are accompanied by the narration asserting that
a commercial airliner would take nearly a century to get there.
Programmes vary in their depictions of a third phase of the Grand Tour
beyond the solar system. Rapid zooms continue, but with efforts to signal
the vast scale of the universe, programmes use a variety of additional tech-
niques to depict movement between stars, galaxies and so on. Introducing
light years as a cosmic scale of distance, a common narrative frame is to
note how far Earth radio and television signals have reached, travelling at
light speed, with one particularly evocative sequence in Space involving a
comparatively slow zoom out of the solar system with a music soundtrack
gradually changing to earlier and earlier music forms till it eventually dies
away to silence. Several programmes use symbolic expositional CGI to aug-
ment graphic verité images of the Milky Way, identifying the tiny area our
radio waves have reached out to so far. For travelling beyond the galaxy,
programmes create colourful, kaleidoscopic tunnel-like visual structures
reminiscent of the ‘stargate’ sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey, as in the
later sequences of Journey to the Edge of the Universe and the opening cred-
its sequence of Through the Wormhole (2010). Again, the links to screen
science fiction, with warp speed, hyperspace and so on, are evident here,
although only on occasion are possible techniques for interstellar travel,
such as using wormholes, explicitly discussed in terms of their scientific
possibilities, as in The Universe episode ‘UFOs: The Real Deal’.
The third stage of the Grand Tour has common elements as well: extraso-
lar planets, different types of stars (e.g. pulsars), black holes, galaxies, quasars,
80 V. CAMPBELL
galactic clusters, super-clusters and also the Big Bang itself. The incorpora-
tion of the scale of the universe within this Grand Tour narrative arguably
offers a clear encapsulation of Kant’s mathematical sublime, as the vastness
of the universe is shown to be containable within a conceptual framework of
understanding, and the technological means of both obtaining that under-
standing and visualising it. The added dimension of these programmes to
the invocations of the sublime in astronomical imaging is the sense of move-
ment, and often movement towards the viewer of the astronomical object,
adding a ‘dynamic, kinetic gaze’ (Bukatman 2003: 99) through movement
through objects of immense scale. Also, whether real or imaginary, the role
of technologies in these programmes, often as tools of movement through
space, is crucial in the construction of space as sublime.
TECHNOLOGICAL SUBLIME: SCIENTISTS, PROBES

AND ROBOTS
Given that these programmes offer depictions of space that range far
beyond the limits of conventional photography, and indeed beyond astro-
nomical imaging in many regards as well, it is worth returning to the con-
cerns about the ‘black-boxing’ of the production of astronomical images
mentioned earlier. Concerns lie not just in the hidden aesthetics of such
images’ construction but, in relation to space science factual entertain-
ment programmes, also around the depiction of scientific processes and
technologies relating to those images that may have elements of aesthetic
and subjunctive composition. For instance, Metz’s critique referred to in
the last chapter offers one quite specific criticism of the series Alien Worlds
(aka Extraterrestrial), arguing not so much about that series’ construction
of alien life through CGI (aliens will be discussed later in the chapter) but
about the visual construction of the process of building those CG images
of aliens (2008). Metz argues that the series:
Fictionalizes the scientific process of researching possible alien life itself.

Computer simulations of solar system evolution form the scientific basis for
the programme’s conjecture on alien life, but such simulations are not pro-
duced by scientists working at fantastical computer workstations that project
three-dimensional holographic images of the “found” planets, which is how
the scientists at work are portrayed in the show. Thus, before the audi-
ence even has the opportunity to learn the results of the scientists’ work,
their methodology has been fictionalized, CGI enhanced and dramatized
for viewer consumption. While the narrator discusses the “real” science,
he never notes that what is concurrently shown on the screen has little to
do with how this science is actually done. The “footage” of the scientists at
work, while presented as the factual basis of the speculations regarding the
fictional planets Aurelia and Blue Moon, is itself a dramatized reenactment.
(2008: 342)
This series does offer a clearly staged environment for the apparent col-
laboration between planetary scientists, astrobiologists and computer
graphics artists in the construction of the images of alien worlds. Metz’s
critique continues:
The producers could have shown the (likely uninspiring) rooms in university
buildings and NASA offices where the scientists actually run their simula-
tions. They could have shown the real computer output, a string of num-
bers indicating planet size, distance from a sun, and atmospheric data. The
producers … are unwilling to directly index this less glamorous truth and
instead opt for presenting a visually pleasing entertainment, even though in
doing so they present science fiction as scientific truth. (2008: 343)
In a sense, Metz is suggesting that this series is going a step further than
the black-boxing of the production of astronomical images by offering
a fictional dramatic reenactment of the production process itself. In this
perspective the process is being fictionalised, blurring the boundaries dan-
gerously between science and fiction, with the viewer allegedly none-the-
wiser as to which is which. What this critique doesn’t consider, first of all, is
exactly what the significance of showing scientists at their own computers,
say, or of ‘real’ computer output might be for evaluating the veracity or
otherwise of the scientific claims on display. After all notions of scientists at
computers or chalkboards or in the lab are, to some extent, familiar tropes
within representational stereotypes of scientists and features of how screen
media, both fictional and factual content, have constructed representa-
tions of ‘scientists’ (see Kirby 2011 for a discussion of this in screen fic-
tion). Metz’s critique also fails to address how the ‘fictional’ constructions
of scientists might work visually and narratively, specifically within factual
entertainment programmes, considering what kinds of framing they pro-
vide for the space sciences that might be to do with things other than
the scientific process, much as the presentation of astronomical images
for public consumption is not primarily (or even at all) about depicting
scientific processes.
82 V. CAMPBELL
By looking across a range of space science programmes, it’s possible to

interrogate this because different programmes take different approaches
to how they present and situate their presenters and contributors, often
using a variety of combinations of imagery. Some programmes do show
scientists in their actual offices, lecture theatres, laboratories and other
places of work such as telescope sites, via largely conventional talking
head sequences, and incidental establishing shots, such as Hawking mov-
ing around his Cambridge campus in Stephen Hawking and the Theory of
Everything (2007). Sometimes they are shown working on chalkboards,
drawing whilst talking through various equations, charts and theoretical
models, harking back to Feynman’s Messenger Lectures recorded by the
BBC in the 1960s. On occasion, they are shown in laboratories or in other
locations involving actual experiments, such as in The Secrets of Quantum
Physics (2014), but more often shown conducting proxy experiments such
as illustrating different types of spaceship propulsion by comparing the
effect of shotguns to rapid-fire rifles on the movement of a chair on a dolly
in The Universe episode ‘Secrets of the Space Probes’.
Another approach of interest here is where programmes have the sci-
entist talking heads augmented with symbolic expositional CGI compos-
ited over their images. In Stephen Hawking and the Theory of Everything,
for example, scientist Pedro Ferreira stands in a university library explain-
ing the relative space inside an atom. Holding a marble representing the
nucleus of an atom, he indicates that an orbiting electron is about the
width of a human hair, with augmented CGI showing an electron orbit-
ing the nucleus. Ferreira then says that whilst drawn illustrations at that
kind of scale tend to show the electrons orbiting a few inches away from
the nucleus, the real scale is much bigger. He walks outside of the library
building before the camera eventually zooms out to an aerial shot, show-
ing how at that scale the electron’s orbit would be two miles from the
nucleus (depicted as a glowing yellow curtain of light following the orbital
line). The Universe routinely uses CGI in this manner, for instance, having
a scientist explain the detection of exoplanets around stars via the transit
method (where the star darkens slightly when a planet moves in front of
it) by holding a DVD on edge, which is turned into a mini solar system
in his hands in the episode ‘Secrets of the Space Probes’. In another epi-
sode, ‘Parallel Universe’, Michio Kaku explains how dark matter would
just pass right through his hand, with violet-hued material doing just that
overlaid in CGI. He then explains the ‘cosmic bubble’ theory of paral-
lel universes, blowing bubbles in a real city street with the real bubbles
transforming into CGI bubbles with galaxies in them, floating amongst

the city buildings. Cosmos uses similar scenes such as Tyson looking out at
the Grand Canyon which then is digitally ‘exploded’ into its different geo-
logical strata, moving around in front of him as he discusses the different
eras on Earth. In a sense Tyson augments the CGI in Cosmos rather than
the other way around, most notably in the reproduction of Sagan’s iconic
visualisation of the life of the universe, walking on ‘top’ of the universe in
a 2-D calendar image—the ultimate Magisterial Gaze.
Alien Worlds, with its stage-set computer lab, is by comparison rather
tame in its visual positioning of its protagonists, and some shows offer
combinations of all of these, such as the Through the Wormhole episode
‘What do Aliens Look Like?’ which includes scenes of scientists in their
university offices and teaching rooms, as well as brief sequences of host
Morgan Freeman turning into a couple of hypothetical aliens, continuing
his narration all the while. In fact, several programmes play around with the
images of the scientists in relation to the topics being discussed, for instance,
with multiple images of scientists on screen at the same time to illustrate
parallel universe theories. In one episode of Through the Wormhole, physi-
cist Frank Tipler is shown discussing the idea of multiple dimensions and
parallel universes existing in a manner not unlike the frames of a conven-
tional piece of animation. Shown in live-action footage in an auditorium,
Tipler is intercut with cartoon animation of himself, and then he shows a
series of still transparencies from the animation via a projector, followed
by composited multiple live-action images of Tipler in various positions
in the auditorium. The animation used here harks back to its use in 1950s
science programmes, so there’s nothing fundamentally new or different in
programmes that use these traditional visual effects and the techniques of
CGI. Interactions between live-action footage, CG compositing, drawn
animation and full CGI are often used in a reflection of the complexity and
implications of the ideas being discussed, and are responses to the problem
of representing theories like multiple dimensions and parallel universes.
With such a variety of visual representations of space scientists across
these programmes, dismissing a particular programme for its chosen tactic
as ‘fiction’ and undermining science, as well as evidence of a more general
malaise as Metz does, is clearly misplaced. What arguably matters more
is the relationship between the depictions of the scientific concepts and
ideas being discussed, not the much more incidental footage in between
such as the ‘lab’ footage of Alien Worlds. Moreover, despite the range
of representations here, there are some underlying characteristics of the
84 V. CAMPBELL
positioning of scientists, if inflected in slightly different ways, across these

programmes. Those that do represent scientists in the most conventional
talking head sequences in lecture theatres and their labs and offices, repro-
duce traditional, arguably conservative and stereotypical images of scien-
tists as institutionalised authorities. Alien Worlds might be trying to make
that institutional context more visually ‘inspiring’ to echo Metz’s critique
(2008: 343) but nonetheless it is still visually offering a sense of scientists
as figures of authority and expertise, albeit through a visual construction
arguably owing more to cinematic efforts at making lab science more dra-
matic and visually appealing (Kirby 2011: 84–89).
Few scientists are shown with the trappings of lab coats and safety glasses,
except in specific locations like clean rooms for instance. In fact, the pro-
grammes considered here routinely depict scientists outside of institutional
contexts, often in locations which enable scientific ideas to be expressed
through sometimes prosaic analogies, such as using baseball to explain
ideas around the particle/wave duality of light in The Universe. Another
example is the use of a restaurant to illustrate a theory of multiple uni-
verses resulting from properties of quantum mechanics with waiters serv-
ing up all possible meals at the same time in Through the Wormhole. In some
programmes there’s a clear intent to depict scientists more as adventurers
engaged in the world around them rather than stuck in the lab, particularly
in Cox’s series as mentioned earlier. Cox’s programmes are not the only
one to show scientists in dynamic activities to illustrate phenomena and
scientific principles; for instance, Alex Filippenko is shown kayaking on the
ocean to illustrate the idea of multiple dimensions (The Universe, ‘Parallel
Universes’), and astronomer Beth Biller performs a fire dance with a torch
on her wrist to illustrate the extra-solar planet finding technique of look-
ing for the wobble of stars caused by their orbiting planets (The Universe,
‘Alien Planets’). Offering a sense of engagement with the world around
them gives scientists a different kind of claim to authority and authenticity,
grounded in presence and experience that is important for other types of
science factual entertainment programmes as well (for instance, see Chap.
6). In the more adventurous sequences, showing scientists interacting
with natural phenomena like waterfalls, the dynamic sublime of immediate
experience of natural phenomena is vividly evoked (Nye 1994).
Moreover, the way that many of these programmes position scientists
in relation to the technologies of the space sciences and depict those tech-
nologies themselves indicates how they construct the space sciences as
objects of the technological sublime (Nye 1994; Allen 2009). A particular
emphasis is evident across many of these programmes on large-scale tech-

nologies, and they are represented in ways that demonstrate ‘the charac-
teristics of the sublime: irresistible power, magnificence, complexity, and a
journey into the infinite reaches of space’ (Nye 1994: 246). Concentrating
on programmes that include imagery of actual space science technology,
the emphasis on scale is particularly notable. Radio telescopes, giant vac-
uum chambers for testing satellites, quantum computer labs, fusion experi-
ments, dark matter experiments and particle accelerators like Fermilab’s
Tevatron and CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) all feature in these
programmes, sometimes repeatedly, paralleling an emphasis on technolo-
gies of scale seen in screen science fiction like Star Wars (Bukatman 2003).
Although some of the core principles of space science theory are demon-
strable by table-top experiments, such as the double-slit experiments which
reveal the duality of light as both waves and particles shown in a number
of programmes (The Universe, The Secrets of Quantum Physics), there is
a tendency to concentrate on and celebrate large-scale technologies in a
number of ways which construct them as sublime objects. This is firstly in
the sense of size, such as Cox walking the length of the Saturn V rocket
in the Human Universe episode ‘What is our Future?’, talking through
the numbers of its scale, weight, complexity and so on, paralleling the
evocation of the rocket as having ‘the trappings of a shrine’ as seen by
Norman Mailer in his descriptions of the rocket’s launch in 1969 (Nye
1994: 243). Nye suggests that rockets are ‘perhaps the final avatar of the
dynamic, technological sublime after the steamship, the railroad, and the
airplane’ (1994: 254). But Nye’s pronouncement is premature, as these
programmes construct other technologies of scale in a similar fashion, such
as repeated images of the giant Arecibo radio telescope, images of large
arrays of other radio telescopes, the LHC and the ISS, often shot from
above. Secondly, it is noticeable in the sense of distance, such as how far
various space probes have travelled, with the Voyager probes being a partic-
ular centre of discussion and representation, as mentioned above. Thirdly,
there is an emphasis on the scope of technologies, such as in consideration
of the fields of view of various space telescopes like Hubble and Kepler,
particularly the sense in how such technologies reach back into the origins
of the universe, continually extending our capacity to see the previously
invisible. Finally, there is an emphasis on technological complexity, the dif-
ficulties and costs behind the achievements of spaceflight, interplanetary
probes, and robots and rovers on the surfaces of planets, moons, asteroids
and comets. Interestingly, few programmes do more than signal the impact
86 V. CAMPBELL
of the politics of the space race on the development of space technologies

(an exception is The Planets). Typically, neither the technologies nor the
scientists associated with them are situated geopolitically in any overt sense
beyond, perhaps, mentions of where telescopes are based, or which space
agency launched which probe. Occasionally the idea of international or
global identity is asserted or implied, say through the international teams
working on the ISS or LHC, or perhaps most symbolically in discussing the
golden records on the Voyager probes. But there is little to no global or
local political contextualisation of the space sciences that typified the space
race (Allen 2009), astronomical art during the space race (Sage 2008), or
as occasionally seen in some cinematic documentaries like Nostalgia for
the Light (2010) or Particle Fever (2013). More typically, as reflecting the
Magisterial Gaze discussed above, technologies are positioned as gleaming,
sublime technologies in or of Space as if somehow disconnected from the
geopolitical with issues of costs, benefits and impacts of these technologies
beyond the science largely not explored at all.
These programmes also reinforce Allen’s claim that rather than objects
being sublime only through in-person experiences (of a rocket launch for
instance), television provides an additional dimension to the technological
sublime experience, through visual effects such as multiple angles, long
and close shots, slow motion, replays and so on that can be applied to
technological events. Allen argues, in relation to the Apollo XI launch:
This produces a different version of technological sublimity in which the

size, scale, speed of change and distance of the launch’s technological sub-
lime map onto that of its televisual mediation, at the moment when televi-
sion became technologically fully realised in its global coverage, ubiquity,
sound and colour imagery. (2009: 126)
The construction of technologies of space as sublime objects through tele-

vision continues in their framing in factual entertainment programmes,
whether through the use of visual effects such as time-lapse sequences of
telescope arrays moving against the backdrop of the night sky (an almost
ubiquitous image in these programmes) or through the ‘candy apple neon’
depictions of space technologies, particularly space probes and telescopes all
gleaming white and gold and reflecting the light. The use of CGI takes this
even further, with dynamic sweeping flyover shots of moons, planets, stars
and galaxies, and into the subjunctive, by offering imagery beyond experi-
ential capacity, such as a spaceship flying into Jupiter’s core (The Universe,
‘Liquid Universe’) or dissecting astronomical phenomena by offering cross-

sections of otherwise graphic verité images of objects like black holes (Strip
the Cosmos). Here too the framing and form of these subjunctive images is
that of the technological sublime. For example, Cosmos’ ship of the imagi-
nation, Alien Worlds’ holographic projector, and the similar holographic
tool used by Sam Neill in Space, alongside multiple images of real technolo-
gies, all frame space as something which can be apprehended through tech-
nology, an extension of the Kantian mathematical sublime and the capacity
of reason to contain and understand the vastness of the universe.
In some senses, the use of CGI to also visually represent what cannot
be seen, such as dark matter mentioned earlier, itself becomes part of that
celebration of the technological sublime. That CGI can be used to depict
astronomical objects and processes beyond current conventional means,
such as images of the Milky Way, positions CGI as a sublime technology in
its own right. But in also being able to depict astronomical objects beyond
any means of conventional imaging, such as dark matter, the Big Bang,
or multi-dimensional branes, the technological sublime of CGI converges
with subjunctive documentary into what arguably could be called a sub-
junctive sublime.
CONCLUSION: IMAGINING ALIENS IN THE SUBJUNCTIVE

SUBLIME
A final thematic framework through which to consider these programmes
that extends the discussion of these relationships between space sciences,
subjunctive documentary and the sublime is in their consideration of
the question of the existence of alien life, and how these programmes
construct aliens both visually and narratively. At the time of writing, the
existence of any form of alien life remains hypothetical as far as the space
sciences are concerned, so the topic of alien life is one which is intrinsically
subjunctive and as such is of particular interest in trying to analyse and
evaluate documentary and factual entertainment treatment of the science
of alien life (astrobiology, or sometimes also referred to as xenoscience
(Cohen and Stewart 2002)).
The first thing to note about contemporary space science programmes is
that the question of the existence of alien life is a persistent theme, with many
series devoting one or more episodes to this specific topic. The institute Search
for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is featured in many programmes,
with commentary on the search for alien life through radio telescopes looking
88 V. CAMPBELL
for signals from space. Frank Drake, president of the SETI Institute, is often
shown and his Drake equation, which estimates the number of alien civilisa-
tions in the galaxy based on a number of variables, is discussed on several
occasions and used as the structural basis for the Human Universe episode
‘Are We Alone?’. Despite the noted failure so far of SETI to capture a cer-
tain message from the stars (the aberrant ‘Wow’ signal notwithstanding), the
topic’s prominence in space science programmes is understandable as evi-
dence mounts for the existence of multiple exoplanets (those around other
stars), organic chemicals in deep space and on comets, and conditions poten-
tially suitable for life, such as oceans under the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon
Europa, focused on in many of the programmes (and one of Cox’s Wonders
of the Solar System), all starting to give realistic numbers for some parts of the
Drake equation. The position of programmes regarding whether alien life
exists varies although they are all on what could be called a continuum of con-
tingency with greater consensus around the probability of existence of simple
alien forms like microbes, or as Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute calls it in
one episode of The Universe ‘stupid life’, to far less consensus about the exis-
tence of intelligent alien civilisations with various figures shown arguing that
they must exist (William R. Alschuler on The Universe), that they are possible
but unlikely to come to Earth (Stephen Hawking on Into the Universe with
Stephen Hawking), or that highly unlikely (Brian Cox on Human Universe).
The issue of intelligent alien life, even in the programmes that consider it pos-
sible, is treated with quite a high level of caution and caveats.
Images of intelligent aliens as depicted in popular culture are few and far
between, and even then often only in relatively quick sequences with scepti-
cal expert commentary as to their likelihood. Into the Universe with Stephen
Hawking, for instance, offers a brief dramatised sequence of what he calls
the ‘stereotypical’ alien abduction story, showing a lone man in a pick-up
truck in a forest at night, arguing that aliens travelling the vast distances
across the universe to do this doesn’t make sense, and that claims of gov-
ernment cover-ups imbue governments with more capability than they’ve
shown in any other capacity. Although the programme does offer images
of CG alien spaceships arriving at Earth through wormholes, and wonders
how risky it might be to have such advanced aliens come and visit us, stories
of UFOs and alien abductions are not treated seriously. In The Universe
episode ‘UFOs: The Real Deal’, stories of flying saucers and the famous
Roswell incident are mentioned, but again the idea of ‘grey’ aliens from
ufology and popular culture are relatively quickly dismissed as in some way
real, and instead are used to open up a discussion of the technologies that
would be needed for humans or aliens to traverse the huge distances across
the universe. Claimed capabilities of UFOs, such as high-speed 90 degree
turns and apparent silent movement, are discussed in relation to problems
of inertia and sonic booms that are intrinsic to the laws of physics. The
programme then develops into a closer consideration of various technolo-
gies for interstellar travel, such as solar sails, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion
and warp bubbles, rather than a discussion of the likelihood or otherwise of
alien races visiting Earth (all of the technologies have drawbacks of extreme
resources needed, time for travelling between the stars, giveaway indicators
long before they got here like gamma rays, and so on).
This programme and several others often draw their discussions to the
point of arguing that the development of artificial intelligence (AI) sug-
gests exploration of the universe is far more likely to be conducted by
machine intelligence, either of its own volition or sent out by organic life
forms as machines would be far more likely to survive the conditions of
interstellar space. Brian Cox in Human Universe argues that humans are
likely to be the only intelligent life forms in this galaxy at least. According
to one theory surrounding AI interstellar travel, so called Von Neumann
machines could be designed to explore the galaxy, able to use resources
found on the way to replicate themselves to continue the journey, and
which could cover the whole of the Milky Way in around a million years.
Given that, Cox says, they should be here by now suggesting that means
there’s no other intelligent life in our galaxy at least. Through the Wormhole
discusses these too, with a brief sequence showing a childlike animation of
replicating Von Neumann robots.
The claims of ufology, and popular culture depictions of alien life, are
almost entirely absent from these programmes, aside from a few spaceships
and very brief images of aliens from screen fiction (and then only in a few
programmes, like Space). Ufology and its claims are not entirely absent
from the factual entertainment television landscape however, indeed far
from it, and programmes on UFOs and aliens are considered in the last
chapter of this book alongside other areas of popular belief and pseudosci-
ence. In the programmes considered in this chapter, however, the claims of
ufology are intrinsically dismissed, either explicitly in narratives or implic-
itly through omission. Returning to Metz for a moment, their merging of
criticisms of Alien Worlds with ufology programmes really unfairly brackets
two very different types of programmes together. In fact, space science pro-
grammes are often particularly precise in their bounding of their discussion
of alien life within the consensual ideas of contemporary space sciences.
90 V. CAMPBELL
Some programmes, like Cox’s series, eschew any imagery of aliens whatso-
ever, with even possible microbial life in places like Europa or the caves of
Mars only being shown through the proxy of exotic organisms on Earth, as
in the Wonders of the Solar System episode ‘Aliens’ which shows Cox at the
bottom of the ocean and deep in caves looking at extremophiles. Others
offer only glimpses of possible alien spaceships or life forms, such as Space
and the Through the Wormhole episode ‘Are We Alone?’, concentrating
more on expert testimony of likelihood. The later Through the Wormhole
episode ‘What Do Aliens Look Like?’ and the Into the Universe with Stephen
Hawking series, on the other hand, do offer explicit imagery of possible
alien lifeforms. Both concentrate on principles underpinning how organ-
isms that evolve in environments close to but different from Earth’s are
likely to have some characteristics that we would recognise. Hawking’s
series talks about things like mouths for consuming food, legs for mov-
ing around, eyes whose position might denote whether an organism was
predator or prey and so on. The Through the Wormhole episode includes
sequences of biologists talking about evolutionary convergence, where the
same solutions to environment problems (such as a torso and legs, flight,
swimming) have emerged many times on Earth and thus would be likely
on other worlds too. None of the organisms depicted are named or dis-
cussed in much detail in either programme, though Through the Wormhole
refers to actual exoplanets GJ1214b and Gliese 581d and their hypotheti-
cal environments. By contrast, in Alien Worlds and The Universe episode
‘Alien Faces’ entire ecosystems are hypothesised in a variety of contexts on
explicitly named worlds. Both programmes consider an Earth-like world
orbiting a red dwarf star. The hypothetical planets Aurelia and Aranel,
respectively, orbit far closer to their stars than Earth does. As a result they
are tidally locked, leaving one super-heated side and one deep-frozen side,
with a perpetual twilight zone in between. Possible alien life forms living in
these zones are depicted, adapting to the extreme conditions in a variety of
ways. Both programmes explore other types of world as well, differing in
conditions, such as gravitational pull, amount of water present and so on.
In Alien Worlds, there is more of an explicit sense of the construction of
these hypothetical worlds as a product of discussion, debate and dialogue
between different scientists and computer artists. The ‘Alien Faces’ epi-
sode, on the other hand, doesn’t discuss the construction of the imagery
at all, with experts merely describing the various imaginary aliens in terms
of how they illustrate how organisms might evolve in different environ-
mental circumstances to those of Earth. Clearly, again, there is something
of a continuum here between the non-representation of possible alien life

at one extreme, and the detailed construction of hypothetical organisms
and ecosystems at the other. Even at the end where alien life forms are
constructed in depth and detail, their hypothetical or subjunctive nature
is still premised on scientific grounds, combining principles of evolution-
ary theory with the possible physical environments that could exist within
the universe. By largely eschewing the question of representations of intel-
ligent life and civilisations in favour of showing alien equivalents of plants
and animals in alien ‘natural’ environments, these programmes clearly mark
themselves out as distinct from science fiction depictions of aliens, as well
the pseudoscientific claims about alien civilisations of ufology. Despite
their extensive use of CGI to represent hypothetical aliens then, these pro-
grammes’ subjunctive sequences arguably signal their attempts to position
themselves within the boundaries of scientific plausibility and veracity as
much, if not more so, than their reproduction of astronomical imaging
aesthetics. Whilst the images of aliens are nominally represented through
graphic verité CGI, they are explicitly constructed within the programmes’
narratives as hypothetical—as having scientific plausibility certainly, but not
being presented as actually real, living organisms.
In some ways the depictions of aliens in these programmes reflect a
rather safe and conservative consideration of the question of the nature
of alien life. By treating the question of intelligence as unlikely, and thus
focusing on lower organisms, the range of issues generated by aliens in
science fiction around questions of morality, violence, ideology, gender,
race and so on, and their position as proxies for real world issues, are
largely entirely avoided. Only the idea, often left towards the end of these
programmes, about the possibility of machine intelligence and machine
alien life forms hints at implications and consequences for our own behav-
iour in terms of technological development, though this issue is not really
developed or discussed by any of these programmes in detail. Furthermore,
programmes considering alien life largely ignore any explicit consider-
ation of its implications for religion, despite space science programmes
often explicitly engaging with religious interpretations of space both in
challenges to religious misunderstandings of astronomical phenomena and
also trying to accommodate religious and scientific cosmologies. In some
regards, the explicit inclusion of religious narratives about the cosmos is
in itself arguably more subjunctive than that of alien life, and it is inter-
esting how whilst some series (Cosmos, Human Universe) use religious
ideas as springboards into scientific understandings of the universe, others
92 V. CAMPBELL
more explicitly turn to religious beliefs and events as objects of discussion.

Through the Wormhole, for instance, as it has continued as a series, has had
several episodes devoted to more esoteric questions beyond the scope of
the space sciences alone, such as whether God exists, and The Universe
has both touched upon similar issues and in turn dedicated its seventh
series to a number of programmes about ancient historical monuments,
events, myths and beliefs (see Chap. 5). Such programmes’ interweaving
of the space sciences with archaeology, religion and the imagery of disas-
ters is indicative of the ways in which factual entertainment science pro-
grammes function, combining tropes from popular beliefs, popular screen
fiction and documentary traditions which may, at times, be subjunctive
documentary but arguably serve a different role to mere dissemination of
scientific knowledge. The chapters that follow look at other sciences that
are arguably depicted in factual entertainment programmes consonant
with the depiction of space sciences in the programmes examined in this
chapter, drawing on representational traditions in the particular scientific
disciplines intertwined with representational traditions from documentary
and popular culture. Having considered programmes concerned with the
depths of space, the next chapter is concerned with sciences of deep time
(Rudwick 1992), centred on palaeontology.
REFERENCES
I.B.Tauris.
Bukatman, S. (2003). Matters of gravity: Special effects and supermen in the 20th
century. London: Duke University Press.
Cohen, J., & Stewart, I. (2002). Evolving the Alien: The science of extraterrestrial
life. London: Ebury Press.
Gater, W. (2015, May). Create your own images with space mission data. Sky at
Night Magazine, no. 120, pp. 40–46.
Greenberg, J. M. (2004). Creating the “Pillars”: Multiple meanings of a Hubble
image. Public Understanding of Science, 13(1), 83–95.
Kessler, E. A. (2007). Resolving the nebulae: The science and art of representing
M51. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 38, 477–491.
Kessler, E. A. (2011). Pretty sublime. In R. Hoffmann & I. B. Whyte (Eds.), Beyond
the finite: The sublime in art and science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lynch, M., & Edgerton, S. Y. (1988). Aesthetics and digital image processing:
Representational craft in contemporary astronomy. In G. Fyfe & J. Law (Eds.),
Picturing power: Visual depictions and social relations. London: Routledge.
Metz, A. M. (2008). A fantasy made real: The evolution of the subjunctive documen-
tary on US cable science channels. Television and New Media, 9(1), 333–348.
Nasim, O. W. (2011). The “Landmark” and “Groundwork” of stars: John Herschel,
photography and the drawing of nebulae. Studies in History and Philosophy of
Science, 42(1), 67–84.
Rudwick, M. J. S. (1992). Scenes from deep time: Early pictorial representations of
the prehistoric world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sage, D. (2008). Framing space: A popular geopolitics of American Manifest
Destiny in outer space. Geopolitics, 13(1), 27–53.
Schaffer, S. (1998). On astronomical drawing. In C. A. Jones & P. Galison (Eds.),
Picturing science, picturing art. New York: Routledge.
Snider, E. (2011). The eye of Hubble: Framing astronomical images. Frame: A
Journal of Visual and Material Culture, 1(1), 3–21.
Turnock, J. (2012). The ILM version: Recent digital effects and the aesthetics of
1970s cinematography. Film History, 24(2), 158–168.
CHAPTER 4
Palaeontology: Monsters from Lost Worlds
INTRODUCTION
This chapter focuses its discussion on the representation of palaeontology in
science documentary and factual entertainment television. Whilst other sci-
entific topics have arguably seen a gradual increase in the uses of CGI over
time, in a manner broadly consistent with the representational preferences
of those disciplines, such as with regard to the space sciences discussed in
the previous chapter, in palaeontology, there is a more significant bound-
ary between traditional palaeontological documentaries and modern fac-
tual entertainment palaeontological programmes. As explained in Chap. 1,
that boundary moment was the release of Walking with Dinosaurs in 1999.
Walking with Dinosaurs’ phenomenal success in many ways seriously kick-
started the extensive use of CGI in factual television across a huge range
of subject areas but, in the particular case of palaeontology on television,
it transformed the essential representational strategies used in such pro-
grammes. Extinct animal shows without at least some CGI animating the
animals rarely get made anymore. Documentaries on extinct animals prior
to Walking with Dinosaurs were a common and often high-profile part of
broadcasters’ schedules, however, and have not appeared without criticism
(Lipps 1998, 2003). David Attenborough made a BBC series called Lost
Worlds, Vanished Lives in 1989, for instance, which concentrated on fos-
sils and extinct life, using artwork and conventional animation in places,
with only a couple of short computer graphic sequences depicting animal
tracks in sand and a wireframe animation of a Tyrannosaurus rex running.

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-38538-3_4
96 V. CAMPBELL
Attenborough was originally quite sceptical over the use of CGI in natural
history programmes, arguing in his autobiography that ‘to present a recon-
struction without the clues and the reasoning that justified it, seemed to
me to be like disclosing in the first paragraph of a detective novel that the
butler did it. Why read further?’ (Attenborough 2002: 322). It is notable,
however, that more recently Attenborough’s work has increasingly involved
the use of CGI in programmes for both for the BBC and for commercial
British broadcaster Sky. His programmes for Sky have utilised both CGI
and 3-D, including the award-winning series Flying Monsters (2010) and
Natural History Museum Alive (2013). Attenborough’s enthusiasm for
CGI has grown demonstrably. Speaking about Natural History Museum
Alive, in which he wanders the halls of London’s Natural History Museum
with the exhibits coming to life through CGI, he said:
I was intoxicated by all the things we could with CGI… I knew the museum
had been doing a lot of work finding out new things about extinct animals
and I thought this was a brilliant opportunity to do something with the
most romantic creatures you can think of in the museum. We’re bringing
these animals back to life in a way that really hasn’t ever been done before.
(Attenborough in Lampert 2013)
He observed some risks in that ‘CGI means you can do anything. The prob-
lem is disciplining yourself and keeping a firm hold on the reality and the
truth’ (ibid.). Nonetheless, that shift in opinion is representative of the
general shift in emphasis towards CGI in extinct animal shows in the last
15 years or so, and reinforces the importance of engaging in critical analy-
sis and evaluation of such programmes.
Series prior to the arrival of Walking with Dinosaurs used a variety of
strategies to depict extinct animals, stretching back into a long tradition of
how palaeontology was depicted on television. As one journalist described
it, in the ‘early days at the BBC’s Talks department in the 1950s, such a
subject would have been presented with a pile of bones and some scientific
commentary, with Victorian drawings, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost
World and Hollywood’s dramatic evocations lingering in the back of the
mind’ (Lougher 2010: 26–27). The predominant strategy then in palae-
ontology programmes historically was to offer a combination of talking
heads of palaeontologists, scenes of them at work in the field or in the lab,
lots of images of fossils and then hand-drawn illustrations, and occasional
animations (or pseudo-animations from rostrum camera work to create
PALAEONTOLOGY: MONSTERS FROM LOST WORLDS 97
movement within still illustrations) of extinct animals. This strategy was

still the dominant approach taken right up until the arrival of Walking
with Dinosaurs as, for example, in the series Paleoworld (1994–1997).
Sometimes, other techniques were used to depict extinct animals prior to
CGI. The 1993 series Dinosaur!, hosted by US television legend Walter
Cronkite, used traditional drawings and sequences of rather crudely ani-
mated models and puppets, animated animals in museum displays, and
imagery from cinema’s attempts to visualise extinct animals, such as the
early animated film Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) and One Million Years B.C.
(1966). In places, visual compositing of the animated models and humans
were used, such as in scenes of a sauropod biting a newspaper and tak-
ing it out of Cronkite’s hands as he sits at an outdoor café in the middle
of a city, and another sauropod appearing on a high school football field
scaring the players and cheerleaders. In one sequence in the episode ‘The
Fossil Rush: Tale of a Bone’, the development of animated museum mod-
els by a company called Dinamation is discussed, and includes a comment
by one of the palaeontologists featured in the series, David Norman from
Cambridge University. He cautioned:
The sad thing in one respect though is that the amount of commercialisa-
tion that can occur around the subject of dinosaurs is a bit like a double-
edged sword. In some respects the commercial aspects of it are exciting
because they draw people in and create a lot of interest and excitement. But
in another way there’s always the danger that the interest, the real science,
can be trivialised, that is in the end the theme park manager or the store
manager won’t be so interested in the science, he’ll be more interested in
the terrifying images the customers want to see. So “never mind the details
let’s just create the image” and that will really sell science down the river.
(Norman on Dinosaur! 1993)
Whilst reflecting the perennial concerns of scientists over the popular medi-
ation of their disciplines, this comment is rather prescient with regard to
the subsequent development of palaeontology in documentary and factual
television in the wake of Walking with Dinosaurs, where the emphasis has
demonstrably shifted from the palaeontologists, the fossils and the lab, and
onto the CG animations of extinct animals.
Whether using CGI or not, the subject of prehistoric life creates par-
ticularly interesting problems for science documentary producers which,
in turn, makes them important objects for analysing trends in science
documentary and factual entertainment form and style. As Moran notes,
98 V. CAMPBELL
after all there is an evident and intrinsic problem with the representation
of prehistoric life:
As a period existing prior to all historical accounts and all techniques of

reproduction, prehistory can speak only of absence: absence of existing ref-
erents, absence of a human being to witness them, absence of a camera to
record them. (1999: 258)
It’s worth recalling that the idea of fossils being seen as remains of long-
dead actually existing animals wasn’t the immediate response to their
discovery, but was rather a product of a process of analysis, debate and
discussion, with the recognition of them as historical artefacts, natural
‘witnesses’ to the past akin to archaeological finds, not really becoming the
consensus until a few decades into the nineteenth century (Rudwick 1992:
16). Even then, turning fossils into images or models of complete animals
was a contentious step beyond the bones themselves, and it wasn’t until
the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries that the practices of imaging
extinct life according to scientific knowledge—palaeoimagery—became
broadly accepted amongst scientists (Debus and Debus 2002: 8). In other
words, concerns about the validity of imagery within sciences often go all
the way back to their origins and this is particularly true of palaeontology
where ‘the act of reconstructing an imagined scene from the deep past,
however firmly founded on scientific inferences, was initially regarded as
unacceptably conjectural’ (Rudwick 1992: 57), a view held by prominent
early palaeontologist Georges Cuvier, for example. The thematic con-
cern across this book of that tension between science and speculation, or
between science and the subjunctive in documentary, has therefore been
an intrinsic one with regard to palaeoimagery, stretching back long before
CGI particularly, and television documentary in general.
Palaeoimagery as a practice involves both ‘reconstruction’ through the
‘completion of skeletons’, and what is called ‘restoration’ which goes beyond
the skeletons into efforts to create full visual representations of the ‘living
appearances’ of extinct animals (Debus and Debus 2002: 8). It can be argued
that the representation of palaeontology produced through palaeoimagery
is necessarily experimental, creative and occupies a liminal position between
science and art. Moran recognises how this must apply to documentary as
well, arguing that ‘documentaries of the prehistoric subject must experiment
in the domain of the image, as the unstable nature of the fossil, the subject’s
only claim to indexicality and scientific truth, necessitates an unconventional
means of re-imagination and re-presentation’ (Moran 1999: 261, emphasis

added). Writing just prior to the CGI revolution in palaeoimagery, Moran
suggested further:
Rather than relegate the prehistoric subject inevitably to the genre of science
fiction because current strategies cannot accommodate its excess, documen-
tary may do well to revise its practice to include special effects, if for no
reason other than they offer to human view a “document” of the unseen but
not unreal. (1999: 260, original emphasis)
Walking with Dinosaurs, then, and the many similar programmes that have
followed that have taken up that suggestion, sit very clearly within a dis-
tinctive tradition of the aesthetic treatment of palaeontological subjects in
palaeoimagery. Interestingly though, many of the initial reactions to and
debates around the series were, deliberately or otherwise, rather ignorant
of that palaeoimagery tradition in their critiques (Campbell 2009). Perhaps
because it took such a dramatic leap from traditional extinct animal show
formats in its approach, discussion about Walking with Dinosaurs and a
few other programmes to use CGI in a similar manner in its wake tended
to focus on three aspects over and above the palaeoimagery tradition. The
credibility of the science displayed in CGI restorations of extinct animals
has certainly been one persistent line of criticism, but this can also be
positioned alongside criticisms relating to, even highlighting, the repro-
duction of the conventions and styles of natural history films, and wider
representations of extinct animals in popular culture. Before evaluating
these programmes in terms of their relationship to palaeoimagery tradi-
tions, and how these in turn might link to wider culturally resonant nar-
ratives at work in some of them, it is important to discuss the critiques of
extinct animal shows in relation to debates around natural history films,
screen fiction and popular culture, and questions of their scientific veracity.
EXTINCT ANIMAL SHOWS: CATEGORIES AND CRITICISMS

In some senses, Walking with Dinosaurs was such a dramatic shift in
approach to representing dinosaurs on the small screen that many of the
early criticisms of it, and the numerous copycat programmes that imme-
diately followed it, don’t entirely reflect the full range of CGI restorations
of dinosaurs and other extinct animals in factual entertainment televi-
sion. Unquestionably, extinct animal shows position themselves within
100 V. CAMPBELL
the tradition of natural history films, as has been noted by several authors
(Morton 1999; Midgley 1999; Kilborn 2003; Scott and White 2003).
Aside from the common-sense notion that films about extinct animals
are likely to be proximate to films about extant animals, there is also the
wider status of natural history films with audiences as indicative of ‘qual-
ity’ television, as discussed in Chaps. 1 and 2, clearly being drawn upon to
legitimate and ground the CGI representations on display. Recalling the dis-
cussion in Chap. 2 highlighting significant critiques of natural history films
themselves, challenging their status as documentaries and offering particu-
lar constructions of nature (Bousé 1998, 2000, 2003; Cottle 2004; Chris
2006), in many ways, the reproduction of some of these tropes foregrounds
the problems in the construction of nature offered by natural history films
seen as ‘balanced precariously on a tightrope between two poles: science
and storytelling’ (Bousé 2000: 84). Rather than seeing attempts by CGI
extinct animal shows to reproduce natural history film tropes as a marker
of claimed legitimacy then, some scholars have seen this as a rather con-
servative approach to the treatment of prehistoric life. Bousé, for instance,
appraised Walking with Dinosaurs as ‘compelling a retreat to the most staid,
conventional forms of blue-chip storytelling’ (Bousé 2003: 232).
Broadly speaking, extinct animal programmes today fall into one of three
categories along a continuum of combinations of representational strate-
gies. The first category, of which Walking with Dinosaurs is still the best
known example, essentially offers programmes about extinct animals con-
structed as if they were blue chip natural history films, defined by Cottle as:
Programmes devoted to observing ‘spectacular’ animal behaviour displayed

within ‘timeless’ natural habitats and all relatively ‘untainted’ by human
intervention, whether presenters in front of the camera, producers and ani-
mal trainers behind them, or humans interacting with, or on, the ‘pristine’
animal habitats depicted. (2004: 83)
Whether entirely CGI, or CGI alongside animatronics and puppetry (for

close-ups) in real locations, some programmes follow this template, offer-
ing only images of extinct animals in nature, accompanied by a voice-of-
god narration, for instance, Kenneth Branagh for the original Walking
with Dinosaurs (Avery Brooks in the US version). One development of
this category has been to take the narrative format somewhat away from
the blue chip documentary and more towards overtly character-led dra-
matic stories, such as in The Ballad of Big Al (2000) and March of the
Dinosaurs (2011). Another has been to parallel the re-editing of successful

natural history series into feature films, such as the BBC’s series The Blue
Planet and Planet Earth being edited into cinematic versions, Deep Blue
and Earth, respectively. The Discovery Channel series Dinosaur Revolution
(2011) was similarly recut into the feature-length Dinotasia (2012), with
famed film director Werner Herzog as the narrator. Like the BBC film
remakes, Dinotasia pares down the narration and excises the contextual
scientific content (Dinosaur Revolution included interviews with palaeon-
tologists, all of which were cut from the feature-length version), leaving
only long sequences of CGI dinosaurs in action. Herzog explained the
rationale for the style of his narration:
I have a certain voice and a certain reputation. If I’m the voiceover, then I’m
speaking almost as God—and I fit much better as a villain. So my voice of
God is never going to comfort you. (in Armstrong 2012: 12)
Such programmes usually employ CGI in an entirely graphic verité mode,

with the evident goal of attempting to present their restorations of extinct
animals with as much verisimilitude and perceptual realism as possible.
‘Spit on the lens’ has become a repeated motif, for instance, as all sorts of
animals roar at the camera, splash water, trample dust and flick blood onto
the lens. Walking with Monsters (2005), for example, used this motif on
multiple occasions, with several animals from the pre-dinosaur era includ-
ing a Brontoscorpion ‘cracking’ the camera lens with its sting, whilst
Planet Dinosaur actually incorporated a shot of blood on the lens into the
programme logo. As discussed in Chap. 2, such imagery arguably typifies
the intrinsic tension between realism and artifice in photorealistic CGI
(Scott and White 2003) as well as foregrounds the critique of natural his-
tory films’ use of the close-up to present what Bousé calls a ‘false intimacy’
with animals (2003).
The second category uses a similar conceit to the first, that the imagery is
literally from the time of the extinct animals, but reproduces the presenter-
led natural history documentary format. Impossible Pictures, the company
that produced Walking with Dinosaurs for the BBC, created a series of
follow-up and then independently produced programmes featuring zoolo-
gist Nigel Marven travelling back in time to visit a variety of extinct animals
in Land of the Giants (2002), The Giant Claw (2002) and Sea Monsters
(2003), before featuring him in a series where his time-travelling adventures
involved bringing animals on the verge of extinction into the present to be
102 V. CAMPBELL
exhibits in a Prehistoric Park (2006). Again, despite the obvious conceit,

the goal of these programmes is still perceptual realism and verisimilitude,
with scenes of interaction between the presenter and the CGI animals con-
structed to match similar scenes in presenter-led natural history films of the
Steve Irwin mould. Marven gets bleeding fingers from the bite of a feath-
ered dinosaur he catches in The Giant Claw, for instance, and in a sequence
split across two episodes of Sea Monsters, Marven appears to have been
eaten in a single bite by the largest shark in history, the Megalodon, at the
end of one episode, only to have somehow survived in the subsequent epi-
sode, climbing back into a boat and shouting at the crew filming about the
‘risk’ he took. Talking about a similar approach in Prehistoric Park, Marven
acknowledged the tension here between fact and fiction through the use of
CGI in combination with dramatised sequences. He said ‘It’s very ambi-
tious and it takes a bit of time to get your head around it. Are you watching
a natural history show or are you watching a Doctor Who episode? Or what
are you watching?’ (in Casey 2006: 10). Asked about the element of acting
in relation to CGI animals he argued:
Initially, producers said ‘There’s a lot of acting here so why don’t we get an
actor?’. But the argument was that if we have an actor passing on genuine
biological information, it’s not genuinely going to work. For instance there’s
one episode where we go back 300 million years to inspect dragonflies and
catch a giant scorpion. I know how to move when those sorts of creatures are
around, and I know how to deal with them—but an actor wouldn’t necessar-
ily be able to do that. (ibid.: 10)
As mentioned above, a variation on this approach are programmes built

around, or featuring scenes of, interactions between presenters in the
modern world and CGI extinct animals, such as Natural History Museum
Alive. CGI is used in a more overtly subjunctive sense in this category
then, as in Prehistoric (2011) showing Short-Face Bears walking through
New York City streets or dinosaurs in Central Park, but again the disso-
nance between location and animal aside, the restorations are otherwise
presented as photorealistic with verisimilitude paramount.
The third and most common category is where CGI scenes are contex-
tualised to a greater or lesser extent by more traditional images of scien-
tists’ talking heads, and in the field and lab location shots. When Dinosaurs
Roamed America (2001) and Dinosaur Planet (2003), for example, both
include very brief sequences of expert talking heads within otherwise
mainly CGI-driven narratives. CGI sequences are still predominantly in a

graphic verité mode in this category, such as a scene of a T. rex kicking dust
into a camera lens in Clash of the Dinosaurs (2009), but other uses of CGI
are apparent as well, such as symbolic expositional imagery of animal move-
ment in wireframe animations. These programmes also employ techniques
of invasive surveillance, depicting the insides of animal remains, and tend
to focus more overtly on the investigative processes used to understand
and theorise extinct animals’ physiological characteristics, as seen in pro-
grammes like When Dinosaurs Roamed America, Flying Monsters, Jurassic
CSI (2011), and a number of programmes constructed around the remains
of mammoths discovered in the permafrost of Siberia and elsewhere. Due
to the preservation of tissues, such as skin, hair and gut contents, in some
of the finds in recent years this has allowed for a greater degree of forensic
analysis and forensic depictions of mammoths compared to other extinct
animals, as evident in programme titles, such as Waking the Baby Mammoth
(2009), Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice (2012) and Woolly Mammoth:
The Autopsy (2014). Most recently, the National Geographic special T. Rex
Autopsy (2015) took this invasive surveillance in a different direction by
having a team of scientists dissect a T. rex ‘corpse’, not done in CGI but an
actual physical product of a special effects workshop. CGI was used in the
programme as well, as different features of the animal were explained and
discussed, but the gimmick of the programme was essentially to use the
format of the award-winning Inside Nature’s Giants (2009–), which con-
ducted necropsies of a variety of extant animals (sharks, camels and so on),
thus seeing an intersection between forensic science shows, natural history
shows and extinct animal shows in a single programme.
From the earliest responses to CGI extinct animal shows onwards, the
balance between science and artistic licence in the CGI representations
has been a central focus of criticism. The risks being taken by Walking
with Dinosaurs were evidently understood by the production team, who
allegedly dubbed the series ‘Making it up as you go along With Dinosaurs’
(Cohen and Stewart 2002: 40). The problem rests partly on the limits of
fossils in terms of indicating aspects such as colour, sounds and behaviour
where, at best, only indicative traces may be found. As Nigel Marven
asserts ‘nobody knows what colour a dinosaur was, what noises or sounds
they made’ (in Casey 2006: 10). Moreover, as acknowledged by Tim
Haines, Walking with Dinosaurs’ producer, theories about these aspects
aren’t really testable (Haines 1999: 10). Turning some of the popular per-
ceptions of natural history television quality on their head, programmes
104 V. CAMPBELL
in the blue chip category come in for the most criticism here because of
their tendency to depict extinct animals without any scientific qualification
or explanation. In March of the Dinosaurs, for instance, scenes featuring
a Troodon draw on current palaeontological knowledge that indicate such
animals were feathered, built nests and brooded their eggs like birds, with
males doing the brooding. However, the programme also showed more
conjectural aspects such as the Troodon’s feathers changing colour for the
breeding season, and building nests as part of courtship behaviour. Similar
sequences in the original Walking with Dinosaurs drew sustained criticism
for this focus on ‘the simplicity of imagery and story’ (Morton 1999: 51)
over science, with one palaeontologist saying ‘I appreciate that this gives
the natural history program a greater realism but it is not something we
can defend scientifically’ (Upchurch in BBC 1999). Michael Benton,
one of the scientific consultants on the Walking with Dinosaurs series,
defended this approach in a way that could be linked to the idea of per-
ceptual realism, arguing that ‘in making a live-action natural history film
about dinosaurs you have to make choices—you can’t show your dino-
saurs having sex one way, then another, and then another’ (in Midgley
1999). Like the comments from David Norman mentioned earlier in this
chapter though, clearly some palaeontologists are concerned about the
reputation of palaeontology as constructed through CGI programmes
(Barrett 1999), particularly if such programmes don’t attempt to explain
or justify the restorations they offer.
In the majority of programmes where scientists are included, at least
on occasion, the fidelity with the scientific knowledge, or at least efforts
to position CGI representations within the science, have been noted and
praised by communication scholars in comparison to blue-chip-style pro-
grammes (Aldridge and Dingwall 2003: 444). Despite the emergence of
programmes that situate their CGI animals in the context of expert talking
heads and/or presenters discussing the evidence behind the representa-
tional choices made, this problem has far from gone away however, with
continual concerns particularly coming from some scientists themselves
about how the demands of narrative can still outweigh their contributions
(intended in their minds to keep the information presented scientifically
accurate). Matthew Wedel, for instance, featured in the 2009 Discovery
series Clash of the Dinosaurs, alongside a variety of familiar faces from tele-
vision palaeontology (figures like Bob Bakker and Thomas Holtz). In one
sequence discussing an old theory that the larger herbivorous dinosaurs
may have had a secondary brain, the originally transmitted version showed
Wedel mentioning this as a theory, cutting out his statements that this was
now discredited (Wedel 2009a, b). Although the programme-makers did
recut the programme to remove this, Wedel raises that tension between
story and science again:
Although some individuals or teams of people at the production companies

really care about getting things right, the show is almost always forced to
follow a predetermined script or at least hit on certain predetermined points,
and it is essentially impossible for the scientific advisors to change the courses
of these things… You can see how this practice can’t do anything other than
distort the science that the shows are purporting to deliver; as long as some-
thing other than the science has priority when it comes to content, it can’t
possibly be otherwise. It’s a simple matter of priorities. (2009b)
It might then seem that the CGI representations of extinct animals in these
programmes are inherently subjunctive, conjectural and speculative, but
in terms of the different sub-categories of extinct animal shows outlined
above, the tension between the contingencies and debates within palae-
ontology and the desire or need for narratively coherent and consistent
imagery is distinct within each of the categories, due to the differential
positioning of their CGI restorations. In the blue chip and presenter-led
categories debates ‘in palaeontology like this are rarely given full discussion
in CGI extinct animal programmes, as to do so would arguably undermine
the specific representations on show’ (Campbell 2009: 209). Programmes
that are essentially about presenting scenes of prehistoric life in action,
whether including on-screen interactions with a presenter or reproducing
the illusion of viewing nature unmediated in the absence of humans, not
unreasonably make specific decisions about how the animals looked and
behaved and stick to those representations. At one end of a continuum
of approaches, some programmes offer no explanation or rationale for
the representational choices or behavioural sequences, as in the original
Walking with Dinosaurs, March of the Dinosaurs and Dinotasia. In the latter
programme, for instance, scenes such as a raptor-like dinosaur continually
disturbed by another species calling in the night is shown waking up, seek-
ing out and killing that dinosaur to get a good night’s sleep are shown
without any explanatory commentary from Herzog’s narration. Moving
along the continuum, more effort is made to place specific representations
into an explanatory context. Planet Dinosaur, for instance, follows graphic
verité sequences with symbolic expositional sequences, showing maps,
106 V. CAMPBELL
skeletons and individual bones revealing the evidence behind the very
specific scenes just depicted, such as evidence of a specific type of injury
on a bone indicative of predator/prey behaviour (see Campbell 2014 for
further discussion). Symbolic exposition is sometimes used for explana-
tion/discussion of general principles, such as in Flying Monsters, where at
one point Attenborough is shown sitting at a computer monitor with an
expert looking at wireframe animation of how pterosaurs flew and walked.
A wireframe pterosaur then walks ‘out’ of the computer screen, onto the
desk in front of them and proceeds to fly around the room, knocking
objects over and clinging to a hat-stand (demonstrating that early ptero-
saurs would’ve most likely clung onto the sides of trees rather than walked
on the ground) (see Fig. 4.1).
Even in such programmes, where scientists are explicitly depicted explain-
ing their views on the likely movement and behaviour of extinct animals, it
is often only through the external, public critiques of expert commentators
or contributors, like Wedel above, that problems between the science and
what is shown might become evident. Otherwise it is only in comparison
to other programmes over time that the degree to which the full graphic
verité imagery involves artistic licence beyond the apparent scientific preci-
sion is revealed. The largely parallel narratives of March of the Dinosaurs and
the Walking with Dinosaurs movie, for instance, depict Pachyrhinosaurus
Fig. 4.1 Flying Monsters (Matthew Dyas, Sky, 2011)

and other animals with differing colour patterns and behaviours. Some
animals are contextualised by scientist interviews but nonetheless look
different from one programme to the next, such as sabre-tooth tigers in
Extinct (2001), Walking with Beasts (2001) and Ice Age Giants (2013).
The propensity for programmes to focus on particular animals foregrounds
these artistic choices time and again, such as depictions of Quetzalcoatlus,
a pterosaur with a 40 ft wingspan making it the largest animal to ever fly,
which features in several programmes with different colours and behaviours,
for example, When Dinosaurs Roamed America, Clash of the Dinosaurs and
March of the Dinosaurs. Often the focus on the extraordinary scale and fea-
tures of such animals outweighs the opportunity to explain or discuss the
representational choices being made. In Land of the Giants, Nigel Marven
flies a micro-light plane, to try and track a herd of Argentinosaurus only to
encounter a Quetzalcoatlus on the wing, and David Attenborough takes
a trip in a glider with Quetzalcoatlus depicted flying alongside in Flying
Monsters. Whilst the latter programme includes discussion over the fossil
finds for Quetzalcoatlus, and how it probably flew in a gliding style using
thermals, neither programme really touched on questions of colour and
appearance. In Clash of the Dinosaurs, befitting that series’ much critiqued
concentration on drama over accuracy (Wedel 2009a, b), Quetzalcoatlus
is given a scientifically unfounded ability to use ultraviolet vision to detect
dinosaur urine, reinforcing this potential problem of depictions that intrin-
sically involve some degree of speculation over knowledge, if not always
taking as much dramatic licence as in this example.
Over time, as CGI has improved alongside changes in the palaeonto-
logical knowledge it draws upon, it is possible to see distinctive changes
in the depiction of different animals as well. Perhaps the most dramatic
change, even within the CGI era, has been the increasing depiction of dino-
saurs with feathers or down. In The Giant Claw, for instance, a sequence
has Nigel Marven catching a feathered dinosaur likened to a large chicken
but a scene of Velociraptors shows them as traditionally reptilian, similar to
their depiction in Jurassic Park where raptors first became part of the popu-
larly known dinosaur pantheon. The earlier series When Dinosaurs Roamed
America, however, featured raptors (specifically Dromaeosaurs) as feathered
and the following year’s Dinosaur Planet (2003) depicted Velociraptors and
similar species like Pyroraptors as feathered as well. Variations continue,
though raptor-like species are now more typically depicted as feathered, as
in the Troodon shown in March of the Dinosaurs. Interestingly, even with
more recent extinct animals where their remains, and proximity to living
108 V. CAMPBELL
animals today, potentially enable really quite high levels of verisimilitude

and approximation of CGI restorations to the original animals, there can
be some not so subtle differences. As mentioned earlier, mammoth remains
have been found in permafrost in extraordinary condition, even with intact
hair and colouring and, being closely related to elephants too, their restora-
tion in CGI would, one might expect, lead to incredibly similar depictions
from programme to programme. However, perhaps due to the ever-improv-
ing technologies for digitally creating and animating hair (one of the big
challenges of CGI), it is interesting to see how different programmes offer
noticeably different CGI renderings, with longer or shorter hair and varia-
tions in colour leading to quite different appearances in Waking the Baby
Mammoth, Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice and Woolly Mammoth: The
Autopsy. These programmes, and others like Ice Age Giants, tend to con-
textualise aspects of mammoths (and other Pleistocene epoch animals) with
great attention to palaeontological details, such as showing CT scans of
mammoth remains for instance, taking great care to recount what is known
and what is not about such creatures. As that knowledge changes, and CGI
techniques also change, so depictions of extinct animals noticeably change
as well, just as they have always done in palaeoimagery.
At the other end of the continuum, some programmes actively address
those aspects of extinct animals most open to debate and discussion—such
as their behaviour and their colour—and incorporate that discussion into
their narratives, framing their CGI representations most clearly as conjec-
tural and theoretical. In such programmes, they use multiple and differing
representations of animals as they consider differing theories’ implications
for the animals’ appearances and behaviour. The debate over, for instance,
whether T. rex was a hunter or scavenger features in several programmes,
matched by differing imagery depending on the theory, such as in Valley
of the T. Rex (2002) and the Horizon episode ‘T. Rex: Warrior or Wimp?’
(2004). If T. rex was a hunter, camouflage colouring would make sense,
but for a scavenger, perhaps an appearance not unlike a vulture might be
more accurate. In one episode of Jurassic CSI, focused entirely on colour,
efforts to detect traces of colour in fossils via a variety of chemical analysis
techniques and machinery are accompanied by brief CGI sequences con-
sidering whether sauropods were grey-green and reptilian as traditionally
depicted, or might perhaps have patterned skin, like that of large herbivores
today (like giraffes). In stark contrast then to particularly the blue chip pro-
grammes, these programmes both contextualise and clearly foreground the
contingent and conjectural nature of the representations on display, and
parallel the practices within palaeontology for theorising about traits that
don’t fossilise, like courtship behaviour. Palaeontologists use techniques
such as ‘extant phylogenetic bracketing’ whereby traits of related living
animals (say, birds and crocodiles) are used to infer traits in extinct animals,
with the degree of likelihood of a trait being present in an extinct animal
depending upon a combination of fossil evidence and traits in bracketing
extant species (Horner 2000). Sometimes this is straightforward, such as
linking fossilised eggs to birds and crocodiles laying eggs to infer that dino-
saurs laid eggs, but often there is room for debate, and the construction of
CGI representations of extinct animals is thus intrinsically built upon this
kind of well-reasoned, but still essentially conjectural exercise (and only
occasionally mentioned in extinct animal shows, for instance, in Dinosaur
Planet). As indicated above, this doesn’t free such programmes from the
criticisms of quote mining and selective editing in order to conform to a
particular narrative that legitimates the CGI representations the producers
want to show and when entertainment imperatives are present or predomi-
nant, but it does shift attention away from the CGI techniques themselves
and onto more fundamental questions about the intersection between sci-
ence, documentary and entertainment in the wider cultural context.
Interestingly absent from the criticisms of such programmes is an evi-
dent bias towards monsters and megafauna in extinct animal shows, for
instance, perhaps because a focus on the largest and most exotic creatures
has been naturalised by both expert and lay audiences, and is just taken
for granted. This is another trend evident across natural history films more
generally. Cottle’s study of natural history production shows how, as one
producer stated, an emphasis on imagery that ‘is going to get you ratings’
(in Cottle 2004: 93) has led to programmes focusing on large predators
and moments of action between predator and prey. As Cottle pithily puts
it, ‘the political economy of natural history programmes disenfranchises
invertebrates’ (Cottle 2004: 93) and that is arguably even more noticeable
in extinct animal shows centred most typically on the megafauna of the
Jurassic, Cretaceous and Pleistocene periods. A propensity for moments
of action and drama, influenced by traditional wildlife films and fiction,
arguably creates an expectation on the part of the viewer as to what will
be depicted on screen, and many extinct animal shows do precisely that.
Palaeontologist Mark Witton commented on this in Dinotasia, stating:
The one thing I would point out is that, like all wildlife documentaries, they
have focused on the gory stuff. In reality, most dinosaurs were herbivores, and
110 V. CAMPBELL
the T. Rex probably slept 22 hours a day. If we did go back in a time machine,
we wouldn’t find much going on, and they almost certainly wouldn’t chase
after tiny morsels like us. (in Armstrong 2012: 13)
Despite this dissonance from the likely mundanity of extinct animals’ lives,
the ‘red in tooth and claw’ view of nature, with a focus on conflict and
danger, has become a regular feature in extinct animal programmes.
Another part of that wider framework in which palaeontology sits as
a television subject, alluded to already, is the prominence of screen fic-
tion as reference points for audiences in the representation of extinct life,
most overtly Spielberg’s Jurassic Park films which are mentioned in almost
all newspaper reviews of and commentaries on such programmes, but
comparisons to other works of screen fiction deliberate or otherwise are
also apparent within the programmes themselves. John Goodman’s nar-
ration in When Dinosaurs Roamed America introduces Apatosaurus with
the line ‘this is Dino from The Flintstones in the flesh’, for example, and
Natural History Museum Alive clearly parallels the narrative of the Ben
Stiller film Night at the Museum (2006), in which Stiller’s museum night
watchman has to deal with the exhibits coming to life at night (includ-
ing a T. rex skeleton at the New York Museum of Natural History). The
Hollywood-animated film Ice Age (2002) has been linked to extinct ani-
mal programmes too, such as in columnist Caitlin Moran’s comment
about March of the Dinosaurs that the plot ‘is, in fact, almost identical to
the plot of Ice Age. It’s getting too cold for the dinos, so they’re gonna
have to migrate south. Yes, that’s right: it’s a dinosaur road trip’ (Moran
2011). The BBC series Ice Age Giants was similarly described as ‘a real-
ity version of Ice Age the movie’ (Naughton-Rumbo in Broadcast 2013).
Stephen Armstrong’s review of Dinotasia makes several comparisons to
screen fiction, such as stating it is ‘The Sopranos let loose in the Mesozoic
era’ as well as comparing it to the dinosaur sequence in Disney’s Fantasia
(Armstrong 2012: 12–13). Herzog himself is quoted as saying ‘this film
is to Walking with Dinosaurs what The Wire was to Z-Cars’ (in ibid.: 12).
Scott and White’s comment about Walking with Dinosaurs being routinely
compared to Jurassic Park has thus continued to hold for extinct animal
shows in general, where they are ‘linked to a popular cinematic tradition
of representing prehistoric life, effectively meaning [they are] positioned
between two sets of codes and conventions, relating to different genres and
different media technologies’ (2003: 320). Indeed, as such programmes
have developed in the early part of the twenty-first century, multiple codes,
conventions and genres have combined in extinct animal shows, with those
that have taken an explicitly story-driven format invoking ‘the more visceral
attractions… of action-packed drama’ (Kilborn 2003: 170). Wollaston, for
instance, reviews Woolly Mammoth: The Autopsy in this manner:
It is macabre and a bit disturbing. Also extraordinary and brilliant that an

animal from 40,000 years ago is here, not a fossil but very much an ani-
mal, in the flesh. And it is extraordinary too what they can tell, from her
teeth and tusks and the contents of her stomach, about her life and her
babies, even that one of them didn’t make it. And, from the torn skin on her
hindquarters and the marks on her bones, about how that life ended. CSI:
Yakutsk, basically. (2014)
So, even when extinct programmes involve the foregrounding of scientific

investigation, they are routinely positioned in the context of fictional and
entertainment genres, both by television critics and sometimes by palaeon-
tologist critics as well. The more overtly dramatic narrative thrust of pro-
grammes that follow specific named animals, as in an early Walking with
Dinosaurs spin-off The Ballad of Big Al, or the series Dinosaur Planet, for
instance, has been described by one palaeontologist as eschewing a hard
science approach in favour of ‘dinosaur soap opera’ (Barrett 1999: 8). As
the discussion later in this chapter reveals, this oversimplifies a deeper,
culturally embedded narrative of animal fables that such programmes
arguably evidence, but for the moment the pejorative tone in the identifi-
cation of generic hybridity is notable (see also Chris 2006: 115). It seems
quite difficult for palaeontologists themselves, not just television critics,
to be able to discuss extinct animal shows without making references to
either other factual entertainment formats or to representations of prehis-
tory in screen fiction. For some scholars, this demonstrates how represen-
tations of the prehistory have been shaped over time to the point where ‘a
common visual language’ has emerged amongst scientists, the media and
the public (Rudwick 1992: 237). In other words, it is difficult for viewers
of extinct animal shows, expert or lay, to engage with such programmes
without drawing on that common visual language. This is not surprising
in terms of palaeontology where there are essentially only mediated rep-
resentations of extinct animals which thus become particularly important
contextual cues and reference points for viewers (Kirby 2011; Dingwall
and Aldridge 2006; Nerlich et al. 2003). Moreover, because of the idea
of correspondence and perceptual realism suggested by Prince (1996)
112 V. CAMPBELL
and discussed in Chap. 2, the popularity of extinct animals in fiction has

had a significant impact on their depiction in factual media. Given the
mediated nature of audiences’ predominant experience of animals in gen-
eral, and almost entirely for extinct animals in particular (save for seeing
reconstructed skeletons or animatronic beasts in events like the Walking
with Dinosaurs arena tour), documentary depictions have to either match
or account for their dissonance from representations that meet audience
expectations. These have built up through decades of fictional screen
representations, where the demand for ‘action and adventure’ have seen
representations shaped by dramatic requirements, such as depicting car-
nivorous dinosaurs as ‘terrifying hunters’ (Sanz 2002: 131–132). The
Walking with Dinosaurs feature film, for instance, does exactly that in
relation to its representation of ‘the key villain, Gorgosaurus’ accord-
ing to palaeontologist Don Lessem (2014: 3). Lessem continues that
its ‘hide is familiarly sleek and reptilian. Only, we now have evidence
that T. rex relatives sported feathers. So Gorgosaurus should have been at
least downy’ (2014: 3, emphasis added). Note how Lessem says ‘famil-
iarly’ here, based on past (and now likely inaccurate) palaeoimagery and
popular culture representations of dinosaurs as smooth-skinned giant
reptiles, so the problem noted earlier of representations not necessarily
conforming to the latest scientific consensus is explained here because
of the resonance of images of large carnivorous dinosaurs from screen
fiction overpowering the latest science. Indeed, some have argued that
the theory of feathered dinosaurs and birds evolving from dinosaurs in
some ways actually threatens the cultural importance and ‘mystique’ of
the dinosaurs (Mitchell 1998: 25), which may be why contemporaneous
programmes have taken different approaches to the feather question—
Gorgosaurus in the earlier March of the Dinosaurs, for instance, is shown
with feathers—reflecting differing views of audience expectations. This
shared visual language then undoubtedly contains elements from screen
fiction intertwined with natural history film tropes, but it also contains
elements from the palaeoimagery tradition which in itself reflects wider
cultural frameworks for apprehending deep time on the one hand, and
the natural world, both the environment and the animals in it, on the
other. Discussing extinct animal shows in that context allows for analy-
sis and evaluation that foregrounds culturally resonant frameworks for
thinking about such programmes beyond pejorative judgements about
spectacle and the subjunctive.
PALAEOIMAGERY FRAMES: FROM THE SUBJUNCTIVE

TO THE SUBLIME?
In an earlier analysis of extinct animal shows (Campbell 2009) a number

of generic frames were identified stemming directly from representational
frameworks in palaeoimagery. For example, another way of thinking
about the preponderance of megafauna mentioned earlier is to see this
as the reproduction of a common framing of extinct animals as ‘mon-
sters from the id’ (Campbell 2009: 207, following Debus and Debus
2002). Monsters being the focus of extinct animal shows have become a
normalised framing device, reflecting such animals’ wider cultural appeal
as ‘real’ monsters, yet safely extinct (Gould 1995; Mitchell 1998). The
dominance of prehistoric monsters also serves a particular framing of the
deep past as ‘a realm of nightmarish horrors’ (Rudwick 1992: 243) and,
importantly, this is a framing device that has featured in palaeoimagery
from its earliest days and is by no means unique to CGI extinct animal
shows (see Debus and Debus 2002). Just as with fictional monsters, the
positioning of extinct animals as monsters also links their portrayal with
other generic frames through which animals and nature have been rep-
resented and constructed in narratives. Scientific narrative frames, such
as narratives of evolution, and cultural narrative frames, such as the use
of animals in animal fables, can be identified and which in turn can be
positioned within an overarching framing device that can be linked to the
dynamic and apocalyptic sublime through the continual representational
foregrounding of extinction as the narrative closure for these animals.
As discussed, some extinct animal shows endeavour to try and pres-
ent their CGI animals with a high level of verisimilitude. The animals
are just animals, named only in terms of their species, and depicted in
isolated scenes of action, often based (whether acknowledged or not in
narration or presentation) on specific evidence from fossil remains. A few
programmes, however, as mentioned towards the beginning of this chap-
ter, take a different approach and open themselves up to one of the more
notable criticisms of natural history films in general—a propensity for
anthropomorphism in the depictions of animals, such as treating them
as ‘distinct individuals’ and including ‘speculations about their emotions
and motivations for their actions’ (Chris 2006: 37). Bousé notes how the
original Walking with Dinosaurs series followed this model, for instance
(Bousé 2003: 232). There is, in fact, clear evidence of anthropomorphism
114 V. CAMPBELL
being used within the natural sciences themselves, in the way naturalists
write and talk about animals (Chris 2006, see also Crist 2000), seen for
instance in the naming of the baby mammoth Lyuba, as shown in Waking
the Baby Mammoth and Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice. The concern
in screen representations has been how anthropomorphism can lead to
animals being constructed within normative frameworks ‘extracting moral
lessons from the animals’ behaviours’ (Chris 2006: 37). The incredibly
successful feature film The March of the Penguins (2005), for instance, was
appropriated by Christians in the USA through its depiction of penguins
as monogamous, and possibly also through its avoidance of scientific ter-
minology such as evolve and adapt in favour of terms like design (Chris
2006: 206). In fact, this narrative framework for using animals to explore
and interrogate human characteristics significantly predates the emergence
of the natural sciences, and is evident in animal fables which feature across
cultures and have a long historical tradition (Bousé 2000). Bousé argues
that whilst historically animal fables (such as Aesop’s fables) reflected the
concerns and values of particular communities or societies (2000: 95),
contemporary natural history films use the format of individual animal
‘characters’ for reasons of commercial appeal and marketability, losing that
connection to community that provided at least a culturally valid frame-
work for the fable narratives (if not a scientifically valid framework). Extinct
animals, however, for a range of reasons have never really belonged to a
specific culture, particularly in terms of representation. The ubiquity of
fossils on every continent has prevented much sense of national ownership
and thus any imposition of specific national cultural values onto fossils,
and the few early examples of palaeoimagery circulated internationally,
setting a largely international framework for the representation of extinct
animals from quite early on (Rudwick 1992). Localisation in extinct
animal shows is clearly done on occasion particularly with programmes
made by or aimed at the USA, such as When Dinosaurs Roamed America,
Prehistoric and Wild New World (2002). More generally, the vastly dif-
ferent environments of the deep past remove the possibility or necessity
for linking modern locations to sites of interest in the deep past such that
even when programmes are originally intended to appeal to a particu-
lar target audience, the global appeal of extinct animals is such that few
changes need to be made to make programmes saleable elsewhere (such
as simply changing a title from When Dinosaurs Roamed America to When
Dinosaurs Roamed). That is not to say that a culturally specific frame of
reference doesn’t emerge in palaeoimagery fables but rather that as it has
developed over time it has become interestingly intertwined with a devel-

oping scientific narrative frame. As argued earlier, in some ways at least
some extinct animal shows engage in quite heavily foregrounded discus-
sion of the underlying science, particularly in terms of animal evolution,
adaptation and extinction when compared to traditional blue chip natural
history programmes. What the more fable-like programmes reveal, how-
ever, is how even that attention to questions of evolution and extinction
highlights a culturally situated framework for, essentially, morally evaluat-
ing the deep past and using it to reflect on modern human behaviour.
To understand this requires taking a step back, thinking about how
extinct animals were initially incorporated into wider cultural understand-
ing in the early years of palaeontology and palaeoimagery. Palaeontology
appeared in a pre-Darwinian, Christian Western Europe in the late eigh-
teenth century, where Biblical accounts of creation and the deep past pre-
dominated, and the first attempts to accommodate fossils with Biblical
truth was therefore to argue that extinct animals must have failed to survive
the Flood, as creation involved an upwards climb towards the supremacy
of Man over nature (Rudwick 1992: 4). A consequence of this pre-/post-
Flood framework, at least in part, was a trend for presenting images of
extinct animals in a ‘tableau’ (Rudwick 1992: 8) or ‘aquarium’ format
(Rudwick 1992: 47, Debus and Debus 2002: 9) resulting in a suite of
archetypal images of the deep past. Most frequently recurring are images
of the Cretaceous, which routinely include the T. rex, going back at least
to the seminal 1906 mural of a face-off between T. rex and Triceratops by
celebrated palaeo-artist Charles R. Knight (Debus and Debus 2002: 50;
Sanz 2002: 131). T. rex dominates dinosaur programmes in a similar way
to how Great White sharks in particular dominate natural history films
about the oceans. Numerous programmes, both before and after the CGI
transition, feature T. rex with series often dedicating whole episodes to
this most iconic of dinosaurs. The Pleistocene epoch has also featured as a
discrete time frame for extinct animal shows, and has also come to be asso-
ciated with a signature set of animals, including the previously mentioned
sabre-tooth tiger and the woolly mammoth, with those and other animals
from that time featuring in series like Walking with Beasts, Extinct, What
Killed the Mega-Beasts?, Land of the Mammoth, and Ice Age Giants.
Over time, this has begun to change somewhat with series broadening
their menageries of CGI animals beyond the ‘big budget dinosaur movie
stars’ (Lessem 2014: 3). Some of this is down to new palaeontological
knowledge, for instance, in continual revelations about dinosaurs, even
116 V. CAMPBELL
large ones like T. rex being feathered to varying degrees, and also to dis-
coveries of new extinct animals, often larger and more exotic than those
previously known. Diversification of the animals depicted is often accom-
panied by an implied familiarity on the part of the viewer with the sig-
nature animals. Planet Dinosaur, for example, begins with a programme
about two dinosaur predators bigger than T. rex and references to T. rex
and other—presumed to be already familiar—dinosaurs, like Diplodocus
and Allosaurus, are made throughout the series. One episode of the series
concentrates on feathered dinosaurs and another on dinosaurs evolving
into smaller, dwarf versions over time on an isolated island (a topic also
covered by Dinosaur Planet). Some have been set in entirely atypical eras
and locales for extinct animal shows, such as March of the Dinosaurs, and
the Walking with Dinosaurs feature film, both of which feature Arctic-
dwelling Pachyrhinosaurus, Gorgosaurus and Edmontosaurus. But whilst
the range of animals depicted has gradually broadened, this deeper under-
lying organising structure having its roots in the original antediluvian nar-
rative frame remains in many of these programmes, whereby the deep past
is constructed as a discrete series of chronological scenes, leading ‘from
initial chaos to a completed and human world’ (Rudwick 1992: 6). The
Flood in the Biblical sense itself has gone from the story, although pro-
grammes often use floods in recognition of how some of the fossils upon
which the reconstructions are based were created, but the organisation of
the deep past into a sequence of scenes has persisted. The Pleistocene, the
Cretaceous, and the Jurassic dominate to the point where other periods
are notable when they are included, such as the Permian. The Permian
period, before the era of the dinosaurs, and the time of the ‘Great Dying’
when almost all life on Earth became extinct was an incredibly signifi-
cant time in Earth’s prehistory, yet it is not that frequently depicted in
extinct animal programmes. Dinotasia’s opening sequence is from the
Permian, and linking back to the last chapter, the Permian is discussed in
some detail in Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. The Permian also features in
programmes about historical catastrophes and disasters (see Chap. 6) but
is infrequently depicted in extinct animal shows unless their intent is to
focus on non-dinosaur eras, such as Walking with Monsters which featured
the Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian and Triassic
periods. The Triassic sometimes features as the dawn of the age of the
dinosaurs (Walking with Dinosaurs, When Dinosaurs Roamed America).
On occasion, these discrete eras are cut across by shows classifying their
scenes by other factors, such as eras with distinct top predators, as seen
in Monsters Resurrected (2009) and Sea Monsters, or through focusing on

a particular group of animals, like Flying Monsters’ focus on pterosaurs.
Typically though, depicting the deep past as a sequence of discrete time
periods is an underlying convention of extinct animal shows with its roots
in the Flood narrative. Prehistoric does this in an overt yet interesting
manner, focusing on current-day US locations, like New York City, and
then showing how that location looked across a series of eras. With each
era discussed, the modern-day cityscapes are digitally overrun with gla-
ciers, oceans, deserts and so on, and extinct animals are also depicted on
city streets before the landscapes transform around them into the respec-
tive landscapes of their epochs. Again the discrete time periods are used,
and sequences centred on what have become the ‘classic’ periods of the
Jurassic, Cretaceous and the Pleistocene epoch feature routinely.
The early fables around extinct animals were also rooted in that ante-
diluvian framework, as in the historical pejorative association of the term
‘dinosaur’, to be old-fashioned, outmoded, lumbering, slow and so on
(Mitchell 1998: 12). The antediluvian fable then, positioned dinosaurs and
other extinct animals as lessons of essentially moral failures within God’s
overall scheme (Rudwick 1992). As time went on and the Flood narra-
tive receded, at least in academic circles where evolutionary ideas began to
dominate, nonetheless the notion of extinct animals as failures in evolution-
ary terms persisted (Debus and Debus 2002: 8). In popular culture, extinct
animals featured in fiction as throwbacks to primitive, ancient worlds,
whether it be in works such as Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912), or
movies like King Kong (1933) and One Million Years B.C. (see Sanz 2002
for a discussion). It is only relatively recently, coinciding with the arrival
of CGI extinct animal shows, that another framework has emerged that
is arguably evident in the fable-like extinct animal programmes. In this
modern fable, extinct animals have become symbols of evolution (Debus
and Debus 2002: 11), and developments such as the link between dino-
saurs and birds and uncovering of potentially quite intelligent and car-
ing behaviours (such as caring for young) have seen significant changes
to their narrative representation. Rather than lumbering giant lizards, not
really inviting the individualisation and characterisation of animal fables,
modern conceptions of dinosaurs have enabled them to be positioned
within clearly character-driven narratives. The rise of the raptors, fuelled
in part by Jurassic Park, has continued due to their representing this new
paradigm of some dinosaurs being alert, agile, intelligent and feathered,
lending themselves to anthropomorphic representation. Dinosaur Planet,
118 V. CAMPBELL
for instance, constructs two episodes around a particularly individual dino-

saur; the first episode focused on a Velociraptor named ‘White Tip’, and the
second around a Pyroraptor named ‘Pod’. But it is not just the bird-like
dinosaurs that have had this treatment, with The Ballad of Big Al charting
the life of an Allosaurus as told by its skeleton and March of the Dinosaurs
following an Edmontosaurus called ‘Scar’ alongside another feathered ther-
apod Troodon named ‘Patch’. Like more traditional animal fables as used
in natural history films, these animals are constructed as adventurous, curi-
ous, adaptable, even resourceful, and intrinsically successful. Both Patch and
Scar survive an Arctic winter, whilst the Gorgosaurus ‘villain’ of March of
the Dinosaurs does not, for instance. The Walking with Dinosaurs film went
even further with its dinosaur characters being voiced by actors, interacting
in a curious (and largely poorly received) hybrid between the visual verisi-
militude of a CGI documentary and the plot and characterisation of car-
toons (such as The Land Before Time series). Whilst it undoubtedly stepped
clearly over the boundary between science, the subjunctive and fantasy,
the idea of dinosaur ‘characters’ even being considered as a viable narra-
tive framework within a film otherwise aiming for verisimilitude would not
really have been possible a few decades before.
The narratives around extinct animals have undoubtedly shifted from
one focused on their ‘deserved’ extinction being due to moral failure ini-
tially, then later to evolutionary failure, to one today where their extinc-
tion is lamented as the loss of extraordinary creatures, some of whom were
successful for millions of years longer than humans have been around.
The conceit of Prehistoric Park, time-travelling to recover signature extinct
animals from varying eras, reflects very clearly this modern notion of the
wonder of extinct animals and the desire to restore them, whilst at the
same time, very much positioning itself within that antediluvian heritage
of the deep past as a sequence of scenes, as T. rex, mammoths and other
animals from discrete eras are brought to the park. Yet the pervasiveness
of extinction within these programmes, from the individual fates of the
animals depicted through to the fates of entire epochs of life on Earth,
positions extinct animal shows within another distinctive narrative frame-
work which again reflects an intersection between traditional and modern
conceptual approaches to the deep past.
The original antediluvian framework made considerable sense in early
responses to palaeontological finds. Once it was clear that these extraordi-
nary creatures were undoubtedly extinct, theories as to how they became
extinct on en masse seemed initially to struggle for something other than
some kind of global catastrophe which the Flood narrative ably served. As
the sciences of the deep past and Earth’s prehistory developed, the idea
of global catastrophes causing major environmental changes and breaks in
evolution (so-called ‘catastrophism’) was rejected in favour of slow change
over the millions of years (‘gradualism’). Geologists found nothing in the
rocks to support the idea of the Biblical Flood, and the consensus settled
on the idea that dinosaurs simply disappeared gradually over time. By the
1970s, however, evidence was emerging of a very clear break between the
last period of the dinosaurs, the Cretaceous, and subsequent periods. At
the so-called K-T boundary (Cretaceous–Tertiary, now referred to as the
K-Pg boundary for Cretaceous–Palaeogene), scientists, notably Luis and
Walter Alvarez, discovered a distinctive layer separating those in which
dinosaurs were found and those in which they had completely disappeared,
a layer in which high levels of iridium suggested a major impact event from
an object from space that could have led to a catastrophic global mass
extinction (Alvarez 1997). Whilst highly controversial when first proposed
in the early 1980s, it was immediately attractive to producers of extinct
animal shows in its implication of a visually dramatic impact event. The
confirmation of the discovery of the Chicxulub impact crater in the Gulf
of Mexico in the early 1990s (having first been potentially identified in the
late 1970s) fuelled the fire of programme-makers and, whilst competing
theories have emerged (such as mass volcanism in the Deccan Traps), the
idea of an asteroid impact has become lodged into the extinction narra-
tive of the dinosaurs. In some ways then, the antediluvian frame has been
reconstituted in extinct animal programmes through the scientific veneer of
the Chicxulub asteroid impact (and other subsequent impacts constructed
as related to mass extinctions, as in When Dinosaurs Roamed America).
Almost every CGI programme featuring dinosaurs includes some kind
of sequence of the asteroid impact. In Prehistoric Park, for example, two
juvenile T. rex are saved by Nigel Marven a split second before the blast
wave of the impact hits them. The impact sequence serves as a clear and
neat narrative closure to dinosaur programmes, but the persistence of CGI
sequences of the impact moment is arguably also evidence of the pres-
ence of the apocalyptic sublime in extinct animal shows. The spectacle and
vicarious pleasure of scenes of mass destruction and the sense of the pow-
erlessness of even these monsters to survive the forces of nature are central
to the appeal of the apocalyptic sublime and, again, provide a narrative link
between the deep past to questions of ‘human destiny’ (Sanz 2002: xi).
If, as indicated in the previous chapter, astronomical events like Chicxulub
120 V. CAMPBELL
are constructed in space science programmes as examples of the mathe-

matical sublime—the extraordinary vagaries of chance that enabled human
beings to evolve in the universe—in extinct animal programmes, it is the
possibility of destruction through extinction that resonates in a version of
the dynamic, apocalyptic sublime (Gunn and Beard 2000), and the death
of the dinosaurs offers one of the most vivid of images to convey that idea.
As Chap. 6 in particular will show, this narrative framework recurs ever
more overtly and forcefully in programmes focused on extreme weather
and natural disasters, but it is interesting to note how what might super-
ficially appear to be an opportunity for spectacular, visceral and fantastic
imagery for entertainment purposes can also be constituted within cultur-
ally embedded frameworks for comprehending the deep past and position-
ing it against human history and self-knowledge.
CONCLUSION: FROM EXTINCT ANIMALS TO HUMAN

PREHISTORY
This framework of extinction and the sublime also helps to make sense of
the focus on particular time periods used by CGI programmes. The late
Cretaceous, the last days of the dinosaurs, makes sense here but so too,
in a slightly different way, does the dominance of the Pleistocene epoch.
Between the death of the dinosaurs and the modern epoch (the Holocene)
is the best part of 60 million years or so, though the Palaeogene and
Neogene periods covering that time frame are rarely if ever covered by
extinct animal programmes (Walking with Beasts is a notable exception).
Programmes tend to pick up the timeline in the Pleistocene, beginning
within the last 3 million years, at least partly because it is here that humans
began to evolve, and here a noticeable shift is evident in questions of human
agency relative to animals’ extinction in their depiction in extinct animal
shows. The possibility of humans causing or contributing to the extinction
of Pleistocene (and Holocene) animals is a prominent thread through many
of these programmes, such as What Killed the Mega-Beasts? (2002), Extinct,
Walking with Beasts, Wild New World, Land of the Mammoth and Monsters
We Met (2003). In some of these programmes, the overlap between modern
man and extinct animals within historical time, such as when humans first
reached Australia, New Zealand and the Americas, encountering animals
like the moa, Haast’s eagle, terror birds, the giant lizard Megalania and so
on, is a feature as well, even up to quite modern instances of extinction, such
as that of the Dodo (featured in both Extinct and Natural History Museum
Alive). As noted by Dingwall and Aldridge (2006), such programmes not
only tend to offer quite highly contextualised depictions of extinct animals,
taking care over the scientific basis for the imagery on display, but the nar-
ratives also often explicitly address questions of human agency in animal
extinctions and our impact as a species on the rest of nature in a way that
traditional natural history programmes are often criticised for tending to
avoid. Perhaps the distance to even the relatively recent Pleistocene epoch
enables space to articulate and discuss issues that would be highly conten-
tious if presented in the modern era, even as issues of extinction in the
‘Anthropocene’ are very much prescient today.
Possible evidence of the tensions in questions of evolution, extinction,
climate change and popular (both political and religious) beliefs may be
seen in the relatively small number of programmes on human prehis-
tory compared to prehistoric animals. Programmes such as Neanderthal
(2001), Walking with Cavemen (2003), Neanderthal Code (2008),
The Incredible Human Journey (2009), Planet of the Apemen: Battle for
Earth (2011) and Prehistoric Autopsy (2013) have covered human pre-
history, but it seems that treating extinct animals as objects for scientific
study, reconstruction through skeletons in museums and restorations
in CGI seems to be much more acceptable than the contentious areas
of human evolution, at least as regular topics for factual entertainment
programmes. Palaeontology as a subject for contemporary science docu-
mentary and factual entertainment television thus appears to offer most
appeal in its capacity for restorations of ‘monsters’ from the deep past.
As this chapter has shown those restorations involve a complex interplay
of modern science and palaeoimagery traditions, of secular, evolutionary
frameworks for understanding the deep past intertwined with culturally
embedded antediluvian narrative frameworks, and with the representa-
tion of extinct life in popular fiction, as well as traditions within natural
history film-making. The variety of programmes produced indicates how
perceptions of a shift to the subjunctive, to spectacular entertainment
in the increasing use of CGI to represent prehistoric life, over-simplify
the complex sets of representations produced in extinct animal shows.
Not only do some of these programmes foreground science in a man-
ner beyond many traditional natural history documentaries, but they also
implicitly reproduce and reflect the conjectural dimensions inherent to
a scientific discipline like palaeontology. Moreover, in the gaps between
certainty and conjecture, analysis of such programmes shows that these
122 V. CAMPBELL
are not filled with random, speculative imagery based solely on entertain-
ment imperatives, but rather imagery bounded by cultural frameworks
for understanding and comprehending the deep past that impact on sci-
entific narrative frameworks as well as those of documentary and factual
entertainment.
REFERENCES
Aldridge, M., & Dingwall, R. (2003). Teleology on television? Implicit models of
evolution in broadcast wildlife and nature programmes. European Journal of
Alvarez, W. (1997). T. rex and the Crater of Doom. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Armstrong, S. (2012, April 22). Finally, the bloody truth about dinosaurs; a new
documentary uses fossil evidence and lashings of gore to bring prehistoric
beasts to life. The Sunday Times, pp. 12–13.
Attenborough, D. (2002). Life on air: Memoirs of a broadcaster. London: BBC
Books.
Barrett, P. (1999, October 11). A bone to pick. The Guardian, p. 8.
BBC. (1999, November 10). Facts and fossils. BBC News Online. http://news.
bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_501000/501832.stm. Accessed 16
Mar 2000.
Bousé, D. (1998). Are wildlife films really nature documentaries? Critical Studies
in Mass Communication, 15(2), 116–140.
Bousé, D. (2003). False intimacy: Close-ups and viewer involvement in wildlife
films. Visual Studies, 18(2), 123–132.
Broadcast. (2013, May 17). You the jury: Ice age giants. Broadcast. http://www.
broadcastnow.co.uk/opinion/you-the-jury-ice-age-giants/5056277.article.
Campbell, V. (2009). The extinct animal show: The paleoimagery tradition and
computer generated imagery in factual television programmes. Public Under-
standing of Science, 18(2), 199–213.
Campbell, V. (2014). Analysing impossible pictures: Computer generated imagery
in science documentary and factual entertainment television. In D. Machin
Casey, M. (2006, August 16). Dinosaur Hunt. The Daily Telegraph (Australia),
p. 10.
Cohen, J., & Stewart, I. (2002). Evolving the Alien: The science of extraterrestrial
life. London: Ebury Press.
Cottle, S. (2004). Producing nature(s): On the changing production ecology of

natural history TV. Media, Culture and Society, 26(1), 81–101.
Crist, E. (2000). Images of animals: Anthropomorphism and animal minds.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Debus, A. A., & Debus, D. E. (2002). Paleoimagery: The evolution of dinosaurs in
art. Jefferson: McFarland & Company.
Dingwall, R., & Aldridge, M. (2006). Television wildlife programming as a source
of popular scientific information: A case study of evolution. Public Understanding
of Science, 15(2), 131–152.
Gould, S. J. (1995). Dinosaur in a haystack. New York: Harmony Books.
Gunn, J., & Beard, D. E. (2000). On the apocalyptic sublime. Southern Com-
munication Journal, 65(4), 269–286.
Haines, T. (1999). Walking with dinosaurs: A natural history. London: BBC
Worldwide.
Horner, J. (2000). Dinosaur reproduction and parenting. Annual Review of Earth
and Planetary Sciences, 28(1), 19–45.
Kilborn, R. (2003). Staging the real: Factual TV programming in the age of big
brother. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Lampert, N. (2013, December 13). David Attenborough leaps to the defence of
those ‘doctored’ nature documentaries—How else could he bring the dodo
back to life? Mail Online. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-
2523080/David-Attenborough-leaps-defence-doctored-nature-
documentaries--bring-dodo-life.html. Accessed 29 July 2015.
Lessem, D. (2014, January 14). Walking With Dinosaurs fairly accurate, says
expert, except for that sound track. The Philadelphia Inquirer, p. 3.
Lipps, J. H. (1998). The media, trash science, and palaeontology. Palaeontologica
Electronica, 1(2). http://palaeoelectronica.org/1998_2/editor/jere_ed.htm.
Lipps, J. H. (2003). Into focus: Palaeontology: A candle in the dark. Palaeontologia
Electronica, 6(2). http://palaeo-electronica.org/paleo/2003_2/editor/focus.htm.
Lougher, S. (2010, December 22). His new vision is taking flight; the big inter-
view sir David Attenborough; the natural history legend tells Sharon Lougher
about his 3D venture, Flying Monsters, which brings some ancient creatures to
life. Metro (UK), pp. 26–27.
Midgley, C. (1999, October 6). BBC accused over dinosaur series. The Times, p. 23.
Mitchell, W. J. T. (1998). The last dinosaur book: The life and times of a cultural
icon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Moran, J. (1999). A bone of contention: Documenting the prehistoric subject. In
J. M. Gaines & M. Renov (Eds.), Collecting visible evidence. Minneapolis:
124 V. CAMPBELL
Moran, C. (2011, April 30). It gets too cold in the Arctic, so they have to go
couth. Yes—it’s a dinosaur road trip; on TV. The Times, p. 14.
Morton, O. (1999, November 13). Talking with dinos. New Scientist, p. 51.
Nerlich, B., Johnson, S., & Clarke, D. D. (2003). The first designer baby: The
roles of narratives, clichés and metaphors in the year 2000 media debate. Science
as Culture, 12, 471–498.
Prince, S. (1996). True lies: Perceptual realism, digital images, and film theory.
Film Quarterly, 49(3), 27–37.
Rudwick, M. J. S. (1992). Scenes from deep time: Early pictorial representations of
the prehistoric world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sanz, J. L. (2002). Starring T. rex! Dinosaur mythology and popular culture.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Scott, K. D., & White, A. M. (2003). Unnatural history? Deconstructing the walk-
ing with dinosaurs phenomenon. Media, Culture and Society, 25(3), 315–332.
Wedel, M. (2009a, December 15). Lies, damned lies and Clash of the Dinosaurs.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week. http://svpow.com/2009/12/15/lies-
damned-lies-and-clash-of-the-dinosaurs/. Accessed 23 Mar 2015.
Wedel, M. (2009b, December 17). Clash of the Dinosaurs: The Discovery Channel
steps up. Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week. http://svpow.com/2009/12/17/
clash-of-the-dinosaurs-the-discovery-channel-steps-up/. Accessed 23 Mar 2015.
Wollaston, S. (2014, November 24). Woolly Mammoth: The autopsy; remember
me—Review. The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/
nov/24/woolly-mammoth-autopsy-review. Accessed 30 July 2015.
CHAPTER 5
Archaeology: Ancient Secrets and Treasures
INTRODUCTION
The use of film in archaeology goes back at least as far as the 1920s and
1930s (Beale and Healy 1975: 889) with archaeology being one of the first
academic disciplines to recognise and take advantage of early television as
well (Stoddart and Malone 2001: 471). Archaeologists Mortimer Wheeler
(in 1954) and Glyn Daniel (in 1955) both won Television Personality of
the Year awards in the UK, and the popularity of archaeology within wider
popular culture has continued to be extensive in film and television as well
as in new media, like video games such as the Tomb Raider series (Holtorf
2005: 42–45). Discussions within archaeology of the role, form and con-
tribution of film, television and other media to the discipline have also
cropped up on a regular basis over time with widely contrasting views as to
whether the relationship is good or bad (Beale and Healy 1975; Moberg
1985; Stoddart and Malone 2001; Hills 2003; Henson 2006; Cline 2008;
Holtorf 2008; Killebrew 2008; Silberman 2008; Sperry 2008; Morgan
2014). Some of that discussion links to the relationship between archaeol-
ogy and public engagement. Unlike most other sciences, archaeology in
progress can occur within the public eye, the public gaze (Moshenka 2013),
with people literally watching archaeologists digging in trenches. As far back
as the 1930s, Wheeler amongst others actively organised digs with public
viewing in mind, not without contention however (Moshenka 2013), and
the notion of public engagement through the proxy of the film or televi-
sion camera has maintained this tension between the benefits of publicity

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-38538-3_5
126 V. CAMPBELL
for the discipline and the compromises brought by having the cameras
present. In some areas of archaeology, such as nautical archaeology, the rela-
tionship between archaeology and film and television cameras is something
of a ‘symbiosis’ (Sperry 2008: 340) as both practices have developed along-
side each other (perhaps partly a legacy of Cousteau’s use of film and, later,
television as part of the development and popularisation process of diving
gear and underwater exploration). The central concerns expressed over time
are the familiar ones within discussions of science and television, around the
strains between the veracity and credibility of the archaeology presented and
the entertainment orientation of television. This was recognised from the
earliest days of archaeology on television in programmes like the game show
format of Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?, based on the US programme What
in the World? (1951–1965) (LaFollette 2013: 21). As Henson notes, this
shows even ‘the earliest archaeology on television had to fit into an enter-
tainment format to be accepted’ (2006: 1), and participation in television
by archaeologists was seen as professionally risky from the outset (Stoddart
and Malone 2001: 459). Over time, the perceived potential of film and
television archaeology both ‘to teach’ and ‘to inspire’ (Beale and Healy
1975: 893) has been countered with persistent trepidations over television’s
emphasis on entertainment. By the 1980s, for example, Moberg was assert-
ing that above ‘all this is related to spectacularity. The more “unique” a site,
monument or find, the better it is for television; but it might be less interest-
ing for archaeological research’ (Moberg 1985: 75, original emphasis). By
the start of the twenty-first century, a greater pragmatism becomes appar-
ent, though criticisms of television archaeology remain evident amongst
even those arguing for its potential benefits (see for instance Stoddart and
Malone 2001; Hills 2003; Killebrew 2008). Some of these positions offer a
fairly cynical view of the evolution of television, and archaeologists’ failure
in many cases to recognise these changes. Silberman states:
Today’s five-hundred-channel cable TV spectrum is not a university class-
room, or a museum gallery, where people seek detailed information about
ancient societies that they can learn and retain. TV is a chaotic, noisy, public
marketplace that succeeds by stimulating the viewers’ strong emotions—
strong enough to keep them watching a certain channel, and not surf away
during the commercial breaks that pay for everything… It is a delivery sys-
tem for a rapid-fire succession of images that create stories meant to impress,
frighten, arouse or amuse. (2008: 175)
ARCHAEOLOGY: ANCIENT SECRETS AND TREASURES 127
These debates have concretised around particularly successful programmes

such as the series Time Team which, during its lengthy run, was arguably the
most widely known archaeology programme on British television, although
its specific format has not become a template in itself for other programmes.
Its structure offered a new archaeological dig in each episode, conducted
over just 3 days in a “beat the clock” format reminiscent of contemporane-
ous makeover shows (involving gardens and interior design). Its popularity
won it praise, and made minor celebrities of several of its core participants
(Holtorf 2007), but at the same time generated some unease within the
archaeological community about the rapidity and quality of the excavations
as well as the risk of giving an unrealistic impression of archaeological pro-
cesses (it features prominently in discussions in Stoddart and Malone 2001;
Hills 2003; and is the focus of Bonacchi 2013).
Interestingly, despite this long-running debate and discussion amongst
archaeologists, there was essentially a lack of in-depth theoretical engage-
ment with archaeology and documentary until the mid-1990s (Piccini
1996), although since then there has been a significant growth in critical
attention to the mediation of archaeology (e.g. Clack and Brittain 2007).
Discussion of archaeology in television documentary since the 1990s has
included quantitative studies of the extent and nature of archaeological
programming in Britain (Kulik 2006), viewing figures (Piccini and Henson
2006), attempts to categorise archaeology programme aesthetics and form
(Piccini 1996; Hills 2003; Hobden 2013), analysis of documentary treat-
ment of marine archaeology over time (Sperry 2008), investigation of audi-
ence interpretations of archaeology programmes (Bonacchi 2013), as well
as discussion of their use of historical reenactments (Agnew 2004; Cook
2004; Kahana 2009). One reason for the increased attention has been
a shift, particularly in Britain, in the professional environment archaeol-
ogy functions within, where having wider public outreach and impact has
become ever more essential in terms of funding for archaeological activity
that require media attention (Hills 2003; Kulik 2006, 2007). After some-
thing of a diminution of archaeological documentaries on British television
in the 1970s and 1980s, in favour of programmes with a broader historical
sweep and authoritative narrative (series like The Ascent of Man), a mea-
surable upsurge of archaeological programming has been seen in British
broadcasting from the 1990s onwards as the needs of archaeology to
raise its profile have coincided with the arrival of multichannel television,
specialist niche channels and greater competition between broadcasters
128 V. CAMPBELL
fuelling the demand for content (Kulik 2006). Despite these fluctuating
fortunes over time, in other senses trends in archaeology programmes
show a rather remarkable consistency in the framing of archaeology over
the course of television history. Sperry’s study of select nautical archaeol-
ogy programmes from across the decades of British television, for instance,
found very little ‘chronological development’ in the ‘thematic structure’ of
programmes over time (2008: 338). Kulik’s more systematic and quantita-
tive study was even more assertive in this regard, stating:
Despite 50 years of archaeology on British television, it seems there has been

little impetus to develop new TV formats; the innovations that have taken
place, like the use of computer graphics, have so far been utilized to rein-
vigorate existing formats rather than explore new ones. (2006: 88)
As this chapter will show, Kulik’s assertion about the influence of computer
graphics is, a decade on, more open to challenge but otherwise, whilst dif-
ferent authors offer different labels for their categories, a consistency of
themes and formats resulting in particular generic frames in archaeology
programmes over time is evident, and many of these ‘had their origins in
the earliest TV documentaries made in the 1950s’ (Kulik 2006: 87).
A starting point for categorising archaeology programme formats can
be found in a persistent emphasis on finds, artefacts and ‘treasure’ (Moberg
1985: 75; Henson 2006: 1; Hobden 2013: 370). Programme titles of
today compare with those of the early days of television quite straight-
forwardly here, with little substantive change between programmes like
Buried Treasure in the 1950s to Treasures Decoded (2014) today. Series
like Treasure Hunters (2000), Around the World in 80 Treasures (2005),
The Treasures of Ancient Rome (2012), Treasures of Ancient Egypt (2014)
and Britain’s Secret Treasures (2012–2014) overtly show how this frame
has remained a prominent one. There’s a clear logic for this, of course, in
that it ‘is the artefacts and the sites which for archaeology can yield good
visual images around which narratives can be woven’ (Henson 2006: 1).
As Hobden notes, however, an ‘artefact’s ability to speak for the past is
latent and is actualized through its deployment within a specific narra-
tive context’ (Hobden 2013: 370). Artefacts and sites, whilst sometimes
the primary focus of programmes, thus tend to serve particular narra-
tive frames, leading to identification of another format of programme
centred on the ‘performance’ (Hobden 2013: 371) of an authoritative
archaeologist, often in an ‘essay’ (Kulik 2006: 84) or ‘illustrated lecture’
style (Hills 2003: 206). A long-standing format of expository documen-

tary, the sight of an archaeologist walking around ruins constructing a
narrative account of a lost civilisation remains a popular format as seen
in series like Lost Kingdoms of Central America (2014). The structure of
these authoritative narratives situated in the evidence of locations and
artefacts can be distinguished from programmes that are framed not
around authoritative archaeological knowledge but around archaeologi-
cal ‘mysteries’ with an emphasis on quests to uncover ‘secrets’ (whether
real or contrived) (Hills 2003: 209). In such programmes, archaeolo-
gists are positioned in the role of a ‘detective’ (Kulik 2006: 84; Sperry
2008: 338; Hobden 2013: 373) and the links to the popularity of foren-
sic science shows have become more pronounced in recent years (see
the last section of this chapter). Programmes with titles like The Secrets
of the Twelve Disciples (2008), Secrets of the Terracotta Warriors (2013),
Secrets of Egypt (2008), Secrets of the Jesus Tomb (aka The Lost Tomb of Jesus
2008), Museum Secrets (2011–2014), Secrets of the Bible (2014) and so on
show the popularity of this framework.
Some programmes begin to go beyond the presentation of a particu-
lar narrative and consideration of artefacts as illustrations of that narra-
tive account, and engage in a consideration of archaeological processes.
Programmes centred primarily on ‘backstage’ processes (Kulik 2006: 84),
showing archaeologists to an extent ‘in action’ (Hobden 2013: 374) and
focused on archaeological ‘participation’ (Hills 2003: 206), constitute a
distinctive format, exemplified by Time Team, and evident in a number of
programmes that have attempted similar, process-focused formats, such as
Meet the Ancestors (1998–2004), Two Men in a Trench (2002) and Rory
McGrath’s Pub Dig (2012). Another category is a focus on archaeologi-
cal experiments (Beale and Healy 1975: 891; Kulik 2006: 84). Again, a
focus on experimental archaeology can be traced back to the 1950s, to
Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki expedition (made into a film in 1950), and
has persisted in television series like Secrets of Lost Empires (1997, 2000),
Machines Time Forgot (2003) and Ancient Discoveries (2003–2009), and
programmes like Building Pharaoh’s Chariot (2013). Whilst on the one
hand these programmes are seen to foreground the archaeological pro-
cess, including what Piccini calls a ‘pluralist’ approach (1996: 94) involv-
ing disagreement and debates between different kinds of experts in the
reconstruction of ancient processes, experimental programmes have been
criticised for constructing disagreement as a dramatic device. King, for
instance, argues of Secrets of Lost Empires:
130 V. CAMPBELL
The drama of each episode of Secrets—its soap-opera hook—is created by

the incommensurability of knowledges, worlds, languages, forms of evidence,
emotional valances, and cultural meanings across these communities of prac-
tice. Expertise is valued in many forms, and its hierarchies in the TV show are
often more dependent on “good TV” (i.e., melodrama) than on conventional
academic standards. (2004: 468)
It’s also possible to see something of a shift in experimental archaeology

programmes into ever more entertainment-oriented formats, in shows such
as The Reinventors (2008–2011), which focused purely on the reconstruc-
tion of historical devices rather than the wider historical context, and Beat
the Ancestors (2013), a series that crossed experimental archaeology with
the game show format of Scrapheap Challenge (aka Junkyard Wars) (1998–
2010), even being hosted by a former Scrapheap contestant and presenter.
Experimental archaeology has also overlapped with reality TV formats in
‘investigative reenactment’ shows involving ordinary members of the pub-
lic engaging in historical reenactments (Agnew 2004; Cook 2004).
In terms of intersections with entertainment formats, ‘docudrama’
(Hills 2003: 206) as a format in archaeology and historical programmes
also has a long precedent although, contrary to Kulik’s assertion above,
the role of CGI in enabling a greater prevalence of ‘reconstruction’ (Kulik
2006: 84) and ‘dramatized’ (Hobden 2013: 374) programmes to emerge
in the last few years is noticeable and will be discussed later in this chapter.
Similarly, whilst the formats and frames outlined might indicate that, typi-
cally, television documentary offers ‘a very unsensationalized account of
archaeology’ (Kulik 2006: 88), the role of dramatic reenactments, CGI and
other factual entertainment techniques might be offering more noticeable
problems for the presentation of archaeological knowledge than this con-
tinuity suggests. For instance, an emergent category of programmes which
might be controversial to archaeologists, even to include as archaeological
programmes, are those deliberately structured around attempts to offer
counter-narratives to conventional archaeological and historical accounts.
These are not programmes that necessarily offer counter-narratives in the
pluralist sense of presenting competing theories around an open narrative
on a topic; rather they are programmes that offer deliberate challenges to
orthodox understanding, both lay and professional, with significant varia-
tions in the credibility of their claims from one programme to another.
The BBC series Bible’s Buried Secrets (2011), for instance, is presented by
an academic, and includes discussions between the presenter and other
archaeologists, religious scholars and historians around a variety of chal-

lenges to orthodox Biblical history. Other series, like Raiders of the Lost
Past (2012–), explore controversial archaeological and historical theories,
such as the ideas of a claimed bloodline of Jesus that inspired The Da Vinci
Code (2003), in a systematic and critical manner, giving controversial the-
ories space but with a relative level of sobriety. Along a clear continuum of
critical distance, other programmes have tendencies to treat the theories
and claims they present in less critical fashion, focusing on narrative frames
that pose ‘what if?’ type questions and treat their hypothetical ideas as
if facts for the purposes of creating compelling and appealing narratives.
Sometimes these programmes concentrate on claims that create challenges
for orthodox science and belief, such as Forbidden History (2013–), and
at other times concentrate on theories and claims that validate particular
beliefs, such as Bible Mysteries Explained (2008) and Secrets of the Bible.
At the wildest extremes of these programmes are those that engage with
archaeology and history through perceptual frameworks that are regarded
by historians and archaeologists as outright pseudoarchaeology. Whilst
some of these programmes are considered within this chapter, programmes
at the extreme end of the continuum, dealing with pseudoarchaeological
theories such as ancient astronaut theory, will be returned to in the final
chapter of the book, dealt more appropriately within discussion of factual
entertainment and documentary on pseudoscience and popular beliefs.
THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL GAZE AND SUBJUNCTIVE

DOCUMENTARY
Whilst many formats of archaeological programmes are traceable back to
the early days of television, it is possible to identify in programmes of recent
years some notable issues emerging from the interactions between these
conventional formats and those of factual entertainment. Although there has
not been the kind of obvious shift, evident in extinct animal programmes in
the wake of Walking with Dinosaurs, an increasing use of CGI across almost
all of the categories identified above is not just a feature of a general trend
in increasing CGI use in factual television but also relates to how imaging
technologies are used in archaeological research. Indeed, in some senses,
the use of imaging technologies as fundamental tools within archaeology
has contributed to a particular visual trope common to archaeological pro-
gramme aesthetics, ‘the aerial, or bird’s eye view’ shot seen as ‘a key marker
132 V. CAMPBELL
of the archaeological “gaze”’ (Piccini 2007: 228). Aerial photography has

been a tool of archaeology for a long time (enabling views of marks in
landscapes, such as parch marks that can aid excavations for instance), pre-
dating CGI. Aerial camera shots arguably reflect a perspective of authority
and totality in showing the viewer a whole site or location from above, not
unlike the Magisterial Gaze discussed in Chap. 3. So intrinsic is this type of
shot that it is often incorporated into programmes where the archaeological
objects or locations on display are entirely CGI, such as the first images of
Brunel’s ship The Great Eastern in the Seven Wonders of the Industrial World
(2003) episode ‘The Great Ship’. In fact, the idea of an ‘archaeological gaze’
has been conceptualised in a number of different ways (Moshenka 2013:
211), focusing on, for instance, public viewing of archaeological digs as well
as the expert perspective of archaeologists in the framing of locations and
presentation of artefacts which has its own developmental history, much like
palaeoimagery has its own history as discussed in the previous chapter (see,
for instance, Goldhill 2012). This is paralleled in archaeology television pro-
grammes not just in aerial imagery (whether real or computer-generated)
but also with the use of imagery of maps, plans, diagrams and illustrations of
digs, artefacts and locations. Maps serve as a kind of authoritative shorthand
in historical and archaeological programmes, whilst issues of maps them-
selves being culturally constructed products, impacted by politics, econom-
ics and aesthetics, are typically omitted. In Richard III: The King in the Car
Park (2013) about the discovery of the skeleton of King Richard III in a
Leicester city-centre car park, for instance, a sequence discussing the viabil-
ity of the location of the dig as a possible site for Richard’s grave includes a
very brief montage overlaying several maps from different eras centred on
the location of the possible grave with narration indicating how the maps
were found to line up pretty accurately. The likely significant amount of
time and work taken to make that comparison, interpretation and ultimate
validation of the location through scrutiny of maps of the city stretching the
500 years between Richard’s death and the dig is not acknowledged or dis-
cussed. The map and similarly the plan of a dig site feature in archaeological
programmes as authoritative symbolic expositional material, whether done
in conventional illustration or through CGI, and usually without question
unless deliberately questioning or challenging earlier claims about sites is
part of a programme’s explicit narrative. In Time Team, for instance, there
is an emphasis in most episodes on digging new, untouched archaeologi-
cal sites, but in some episodes, they conduct digs on sites previously dug
by antiquarians, often using their dig records as starting points but in turn
using them to show the flaws and omissions in older processes by compari-
son to modern standards. Otherwise the map and plan are treated within
these programmes as being of a high level of evidentiary quality, and where
maps are combined with aerial photography, they are underpinned by what
is amongst ‘the most evidentiary’ of images (Winston 2008: 7), thus gen-
erating this notion of an authoritative archaeological gaze. The authority of
this gaze has underpinned a number of historical series, particularly those
focused on military conflict, where aerial photography, maps and CGI have
been used in a variety of combinations. In Battlefield Britain (2004) and
20th Century Battlefields (2008), for instance, CGI is used in a symbolic
expositional fashion via a digitally animated sand table used to display mili-
tary positions, whilst a presenter walks the actual battlefield recounting the
events. In Battle 360 (2008), accounts from the crew of the USS Enterprise
battleship are interspersed with CGI sequences of the battles they recount,
and in The Lost Evidence, soldiers’ accounts are linked to 3-D digital anima-
tions based on wartime aerial reconnaissance photographs of battlefields.
Despite the grounding of such programmes in core conventional evi-
dentiary techniques from documentary, as in the eyewitness account and
expert commentary but also in archaeology through aerial photogra-
phy, maps and plans, the overt and increasing use of CGI in such pro-
grammes is central to the disquiet raised about documentary claims to
the real in the digital era, with The Lost Evidence singled out by Winston,
for instance (2008: 7–9). As noted in Chap. 2, the use of CGI in histori-
cal/archaeological programmes is also specifically referred to in Wolf’s cri-
tique of subjunctive documentary (1999: 282). In factual entertainment
and documentary programmes on archaeology of the last decade or so, an
increasing use of CGI has come not only in relation to its application to tra-
ditional expository documentary techniques, such as maps, diagrams and
archaeological techniques like aerial photography, but also in parallel to
the increasing prevalence of a range of other techniques in modern archae-
ology. At least since the 1990s, a variety of technologies have expanded
archaeological techniques including the use of geographical information
systems (GIS), geophysics (magnetometry, electrical resistance, electro-
magnetic conductivity and ground-penetrating radar [GPR]), and remote-
sensing (such as aerial and satellite imagery using thermal, infrared and
conventional photographic capabilities, laser-based Light raDAR [Lidar],
and side-scan sonar for underwater archaeology). With all of these tech-
nologies have come new kinds of computer-generated archaeological data
with visual outputs, that increasingly have become incorporated into
134 V. CAMPBELL
television representations of archaeology, intersecting with the develop-

ment of CGI in television more widely. Another way of putting that would
be to say there are clear intersections between the rise of so-called subjunc-
tive documentary and the evolution of the archaeological gaze. Indeed,
whilst the persistence of the otherwise arguably conservative thematic pat-
terns of coverage (dominated by secret mysteries of lost and buried trea-
sures) has continued without a great deal of significant structural change to
archaeology programme forms (Kulik 2006; Sperry 2008), one area where
change is evident is in how several of these newer technologies have gradu-
ally come to prominence alongside or, even in some cases, ahead of the
archaeological locations and objects as the central focus of programmes.
In a number of different ways, it is possible to argue that the intersection
between archaeology programmes and CGI has led to examples of what
might be called a subjunctive archaeological gaze, through which the tradi-
tional authoritative documentary truth-claims of archaeology programmes’
aesthetics (Hobden 2013: 377) are subsumed by narratives incorporating
various forms of CGI.
Perhaps the most overt examples of a possible subjunctive archaeological
gaze are programmes where there is the sense in which new archaeological
technologies have become the objects of wonder on display themselves,
continuing a trend evident in the sciences discussed in previous chapters. A
body of programmes by the BBC arguably illustrate this form of the sub-
junctive archaeological gaze particularly clearly. Egypt’s Lost Cities (2011),
Rome’s Lost Empire (2012), Jungle Atlantis (2014), City Beneath the Waves:
Pavlopetri (2011) and Rome’s Invisible City (2015) are all themed around
technologies providing new visualisations of known archaeological sites, and
include sequences where the central ‘reveal’ moment, the equivalent of the
object being dug out of the ground, is often a sequence where the results
of the technological analysis are displayed on screen to the archaeological
team and/or the programme presenters (see Fig. 5.1). The reveal of such
programmes, comes not in a trench or in a find then, but via a projected
computer screen image. Egypt’s Lost Cities, Rome’s Lost Empire and Jungle
Atlantis are all structured around the use of satellite and aerial Lidar imag-
ery, able to see beneath built-up environments and forest canopies to reveal
earthworks and other indicators of roadways, tombs, buildings, towns and
cities. In each of these programmes’ cases, focused on Egypt, Rome and
Angkor Wat in Cambodia, respectively, successive sweeps of landscape by
the technologies are revealed to the teams and hosts, with actual results
imagery converted into symbolic expositional CGI, and then on occasion
Fig. 5.1 Egypt’s Lost Cities (Harvey Lilley, BBC, 2011)
into graphic verité CGI sequences as well. City Beneath the Waves does
much the same thing but using a sonar and 3-D laser imaging tool instead,
for an investigation of the ancient Greek town of Pavlopetri, once coastal
but now underwater. Rome’s Invisible City focuses on the ancient Roman
mines beneath the city, and from where much of the stone used to make
the ancient city came from. Another 3-D laser-scanning digital camera fea-
tures in this programme, enabling a modelling in photorealistic 3-D both
of the overground modern-day city, its ancient underworld and their inter-
relationship. Whilst these programmes invariably involve their presenters
physically exploring many of the places and spaces uncovered by the new
technologies, it is the visual spectacle of the imagery produced by these
technologies that is the selling point of these programmes.
Sometimes there is a confluence of the two types of imagery; for instance,
in one sequence of Rome’s Invisible City, the presenter and an archaeolo-
gist are shown standing inside the Pantheon, but also staring down at a
digital, symbolic expositional image of the building’s construction on a
tablet computer in the archaeologist’s hands. This is not just a trend within
the BBC, as the National Geographic series Time Scanners (2013) takes
a similar approach looking at well-known existing monuments, like the
Great Pyramid of Giza and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and using a
3-D laser scanner on those buildings. Again, alongside walkarounds of the
136 V. CAMPBELL
monuments and discussion of building methods and techniques, the cli-

mactic scenes of each episode are the final completed laser-scans of the
buildings being revealed to archaeologists. The use of visualising technolo-
gies to see underneath or within archaeological objects reflects a clear inva-
sive surveillance usage of CGI in such programmes, and that becomes even
more evident in the treatment of people in archaeological programmes
(discussed later in this chapter). Whilst in some of these programmes the
technologies are shown to enable and enhance on-the-ground conven-
tional archaeological excavations, in some senses the techniques enable the
building up of an understanding of archaeological sites without the need
to excavate, and also in areas difficult or impossible to investigate on the
ground for reasons of accessibility whether due to geographical or geopo-
litical reasons (such as conflicts in Egypt being shown to impact directly
on discoveries made in Egypt’s Lost Cities). Indeed, this is part of their
appeal within modern archaeology focused far more on the maintenance
of archaeological remains in situ, rather than the antiquarian or popular
culture Indiana Jones-like perception of archaeologists always wanting to
dig things up, take them away and put them in museums. To that extent
then, these programmes may centre on the visual spectacle of new archaeo-
logical technologies but are arguably consonant with the procedures and
principles of modern archaeology even whilst they foreground CGI as their
primary visual evidence. As Prince pointed out (2012: 152), and as seen in
Chap. 3 in relation to astronomical imagery, when the particular science in
question utilises digital imaging technologies and treats these as authentic,
valid and essentially indexical, one could ask why documentaries that are
constructed around that very imagery should be considered to be any less
valid, or rather, any more subjunctive than any other kind of documentary.
In this regard then, it might be appropriate to see such programmes as
offering a subjunctive archaeological gaze, in that it is the archaeological
claims to knowledge of the programmes that depend upon CGI, but that
they are at the same time essentially legitimate science documentaries in
every other sense.
A second form of what could be called a subjunctive archaeological gaze
being evident in contemporary archaeology programmes parallels the trend
discussed in the previous chapter relating to extinct animals, with an empha-
sis on the CGI reconstruction of artefacts, monuments, buildings and cities.
In the first category, the central reveal is often the imagery resulting from
the new technology being applied or graphic verité CGI based very closely
on such technologies, whereas in this category, the CGI goes beyond that
arguably bounded usage to offer graphic verité reconstructions based more

on theoretical assertions within the core of the programmes’ narratives,
and in this sense getting closer to the kinds of critiques that Wolf and oth-
ers have made. In Operation Stonehenge (2014), for instance, graphic verité
CGI is used throughout the two-part programme to depict various stages
in the history of Stonehenge and its landscape, building ultimately to a
reconstruction of the site as it is argued to have looked in its prime (a com-
plete circle of shining white stones). Just as in the previous chapter dealing
with reconstructions of extinct animals, the reconstruction of ancient arte-
facts, monuments and sites is a result of a combination of archaeological
evidence, professionally grounded expertise in understanding what missing
components would’ve looked like, and the aesthetic decisions of computer
animators. The relationship between CGI and archaeology in this sense is
somewhat different, however, to that of palaeontology. As well as the argu-
ably much easier task of creating perceptually realistic CGI of inanimate
objects and buildings compared to once living creatures, the degree of
overlap between some remote-sensing techniques of archaeology and tools
for constructing CGI landscapes developed for fictional film and television
programmes arguably gives the use of CGI reconstructions in archaeology
programmes an additional layer to their veridical claims. Winston’s con-
cerns about The Lost Evidence mentioned above, for instance, don’t really
acknowledge the legitimacy of techniques such as orthophotography, used
in that series, and other techniques like photogrammetry (which allows
accurate 3-D imagery to be reconstructed from conventional 2-D photo-
graphs) and geometric mapping software that enables 2-D images like pho-
tographs and matte paintings to be composited onto 3-D environments,
which have allowed film and documentary makers ‘to replicate historical
locations from a now-distant era according to parameters of indexical real-
ism’ (Prince 2012: 176). Prince cites the example of an aerial flyover shot
of San Francisco depicted in the film Zodiac (2007), a fact-based thriller
about the search for the eponymous American serial killer, showing the city
as it looked in 1968 shot entirely in CGI based on photographic imagery
from the time (Prince 2012: 173–176). Whilst few archaeology documen-
taries have utilised these techniques with quite the production values seen
in Hollywood movies, similar efforts have definitely been made, such as in
programmes like the BBC’s Pyramid (2002). A similar logic appears to be
at work here, where the spectacle of perceptually real imagery of a recon-
structed Stonehenge or the pyramids of Giza, say, becomes the focal point
of the narratives of programmes, even as some aspects of the processes of
138 V. CAMPBELL
the production of those images are not foregrounded. Time Team again
provides a good illustration of this, more as a result of its longevity than
it being a particularly CGI-heavy series. In early series in the mid 1990s,
whilst some digital imagery was used to reconstruct buildings and finds,
often a key sequence would involve an historical illustrator revealing com-
pleted drawings of the site produced over the course of the dig (often with
inserted shots of the illustrator during the dig consulting with archaeolo-
gists). As the series progressed, gradually the illustrator’s role was replaced
by an increased use of CGI, with the last few series often compositing CGI
imagery on top of shots of archaeologists’ discussing theories as to the
nature of their finds on site but with neither the producers nor the process
of the CGI construction depicted on screen. Having once been overtly
presented as part of the archaeological process then, visual reconstruction
shifts to an increasingly behind-the-scenes process as traditional illustration
is gradually replaced by CGI over the course of the series. To some extent,
this reflects an evident tension between the benefits graphic verité CGI
brings to programmes’ archaeological gaze and claims to the real through
its capacity to offer highly perceptually realistic imagery of archaeological
artefacts and locations, and the possible undermining of that benefit in
dwelling on the discussion of that imagery as a construction.
For programmes dealing with recent historical events, CGI sequences
can be anchored by eyewitness interview material (like The Lost Evidence
and Battle 360). Typically, the further back in time you go, the less anchor-
ing material there is to draw upon, such as written historical accounts, and
for some eras without contemporaneous written records (e.g. Stonehenge),
anchoring of imagery is intrinsically linked to archaeological processes
and the symbiotic relationship between evidence and theory that informs
archaeological epistemology (Kosso 2006). To some extent, this may
explain the general continued conservatism of some archaeology docu-
mentaries sticking to the extensively researched, heavily evidenced events
and eras, although this in turn may also explain the persistence of another
arguably subjunctive strand of programmes centred on attempts to solve
apparent ‘mysteries’ (Hills 2003: 209), especially those associated with
mythology in general and Biblical archaeology in particular. The extent to
which graphic verité CGI reconstructions of artefacts and buildings might
be considered to demonstrate a subjunctive archaeological gaze depends on
the work done in the programme to contextualise and qualify the imagery
being presented, and different programmes do that to different extents.
The narrative structure of programmes is key to this, with CGI typically
qualified to a greater or lesser degree depending on whether a programme

is centred on presenting a particular theory or account or includes discus-
sion of competing theories. In programmes where competing theories are
considered, such as in experimental archaeology programmes or archaeo-
logical forensics shows like History Cold Case and Mummies Alive (2015),
the contingent nature of CGI representations is largely foregrounded as
part of such programmes’ investigative formats—pitting competing theo-
ries against each other, and sometimes depicting them in CGI as well.
Where a programme is essentially presenting a singular theoretical
account of an historical event, however, CGI tends to be presented with-
out being explicitly contested, as simply an illustration of the theoretical
and evidentiary claims being made and/or part of the evidentiary claims
themselves, and it is here where this second sense of a subjunctive archaeo-
logical gaze may occur. As indicated elsewhere in the book, the presenta-
tion of a singular narrative necessarily involves minimalising, marginalising
or even outright omitting critiques, counter-arguments, and dissonant
voices in a way that many see as antithetical to the nature of science. In
that sense, CGI is not merely a means of illustrating theory but becomes
a potential part of the persuasive case a programme is trying to make for
its central claims. The extent to which this is problematic depends on the
contextualisation of the CGI on display. Some programmes take particular
care to construct a strong theoretical and evidentiary basis for the claims
being presented which can be seen to anchor the CGI as well, such as
in a programme like Operation Stonehenge. The white sheen of the CG
henge in its pomp, for instance, is anchored in a sequence where an archae-
ologist works some of the same kind of stone showing how the original
appearance would’ve been a bright, white colour, and in aerial shots reveal-
ing parch marks showing that the henge circle was once a full circle, and
other sequences as well ground the CGI images implicitly within a body
of explicitly presented and explained archaeological evidence. Similarly in
City Beneath the Waves, space is given within the documentary to show
a digital visual artist exploring ancient buildings proximate to the site to
get a feel for the colours, textures and feel of local building materials,
and discussing the likely layouts and uses of buildings with archaeolo-
gists to ground their production of a graphic verité animation based in
the archaeological evidence. Pyramid, on the other hand, uses an entirely
dramatised narrative format for depicting the building of Khufu’s Great
Pyramid focused on an acknowledged fictional character (voiced by Omar
Sharif) and grounded by an omniscient narrator, resulting in sequences
140 V. CAMPBELL
of the construction of the pyramid according to a specific theory of how

that was done. In particular, the idea of giant ramps being constructed to
explain how blocks were moved from the nearby quarry onto the pyramid
is depicted in graphic verité CGI, with the narration simply stating this
is how it was done. But there are problems with the ramp theory—it is a
theory not a fact (Kosso 2006: 19)—and later programmes have presented
alternative theories about the building of the pyramids such as in the
Treasures Decoded (2014) episode ‘The Great Pyramid’. If the CGI is fore-
grounded within more of a narrative format then, like Hills’ notion of a
‘travel adventure’ (2003: 206) which they mention in relation to Pyramid,
there is more of a compulsion to present the CGI in a manner where its
nature as a construction is not validated in any way, it is simply presented
as authoritative. Rome’s Great Battles (2010–2011), for instance, takes this
approach as well with an omniscient narration overlaying high produc-
tion value dramatic reenactments within graphic verité CGI environments.
Other similar style programmes, like Pompeii: The Last Day (2003) and the
more recent Atlantis: End of a World, Birth of a Legend (2011), tweak this
format by offering quick inserts or wipes between archaeological remains
and the CG recreations of locations, to show the consonance of the CGI
with the remains whilst trying to prevent disruption of the constructed
verisimilitude of their dramatised re-enactments. Just as with the ‘making
of’ programmes that sometimes accompany extinct animal shows with this
story format, sometimes such programmes have companion programmes
that have a more conventional archaeological aesthetic such as Atlantis:
The Evidence (2011) into which the evidentiary basis of the more drama-
tised main programmes are placed. The King in the Car Park had a similar
companion programme called The Unseen Evidence (2013), which spent
more time explaining and discussing the various processes leading to the
identification of the skeleton as that of Richard III. The shift towards an
ever more subjunctive position, marginalising or omitting entirely the evi-
dence underpinning the images presented, is evident here in two regards.
First, the narrative framing of the subject matter varies in terms of its docu-
mentary truth-claims from subject to subject, even when the structural for-
mat remains relatively consistent. For instance, Pompeii: The Last Day not
only is grounded in the archaeological remains of the city itself but also has
additional weight through both surviving writing within the city (such as
campaign slogans from people seeking political office) and the eyewitness
writings of Pliny such that the dramatisations are structured around actual
known inhabitants. As mentioned, Pyramid on the other hand builds a
narrative around an explicitly fictional character, although again it is other-

wise based on a wealth of archaeological and some written evidence as well.
The Minoan site of Akrotiri on the island of Santorini is at least as archaeo-
logically rich as either Pompeii or Giza, but by framing it as the potential
inspiration for Plato’s story of Atlantis, the programme Atlantis: End of a
World, Birth of Legend proffers a much more tenuous link between a real
and significant archaeological site to an essentially mythical story. In a way,
this illustrates one concern amongst archaeologists that to ‘be successful,
every archaeology documentary must swing for the fences: ancient empires
must be shattered, modern beliefs justified and headlines made’ (Silberman
2008: 175). In other words, unless a programme can hook its content into
a particularly attractive or engaging narrative framework, it is unlikely to
succeed, but in doing so often that stretches programmes’ claims to the
real into the territory of subjunctive documentary. The very same style of
narrated docudrama in Pyramid, for example, was also used by the BBC to
produce Noah’s Ark: The Real Story (2003), an account of a possible set of
events and experiences grounded in the archaeological conditions of the
alleged time of the Biblical Flood. The same approach then can be used
for myth as well as archaeology. This ‘flattening of the landscape’, as Hale
calls it, leads to a problematic situation whereby programmes may look the
same whether ‘founded on genuinely evidence-based history’ or (referring
to programmes on Atlantis) ‘specious fantasy’ (Hale 2006: 239).
Second, much as with the extinct animals of the previous chapter, this
becomes evident as a potentially significant problem when different pro-
grammes on the same topic offer different claims, and use CGI differ-
ently as a result of those claims. It is here that programmes in the area
of archaeological investigation of myths and Biblical archaeology gener-
ate some of the clearest problems, both offering the potential for engag-
ing audiences and at the same time stretching archaeological credibility
arguably into a form of the subjunctive archaeological gaze. As Silberman
acknowledges:
The search for the Ark of the Covenant, the miracles of Exodus, Noah’s Ark,
and Sodom and Gomorrah may seem like cartoon-like subjects to profes-
sional archaeologists, but each of them powerfully embodies the deepest
fantasies for this or any other age: treasure, miracles, cataclysm, devastation,
and the allure of a distant, wonder-filled past. (2008: 175–176)
142 V. CAMPBELL
CGI contributes to this in the way that it is a tool which can be used both for
reconstructions carefully situated in archaeological evidence and for those
situated more within compelling and attractive but predominantly belief-
based narratives, and there’s no way to tell one from the other purely from
the CGI alone. Treatment of the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah
serves as a good example here, having been the subject of numerous pro-
grammes over the years. In its Ancient Apocalypse (2001) series, the BBC
suggested that the cities were destroyed by landslides and earthquakes due
to their likely location along the Jordan Rift Valley, offering CGI sequences
of that theory. Bible Mysteries Explained, alternatively, uses CGI to depict
a different theory of the famous cities’ destruction resulting from an impact-
ing asteroid plume raining fire down on them. In this programme’s sce-
nario, the plume from an asteroid impacting in Austria in 3123 BC (the date
being extrapolated from a Sumerian planisphere from Nineveh) is presented
as the cause of the destruction of the cities, identified as the archaeological
sites of Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira. In the Secrets of the Bible episode ‘The
Search for Sodom’, yet another theory is presented, of a cometary or aster-
oid airburst over the city excavated at Tall el-Hammam, sometime between
1600 and 1650 BC, accompanied with a brief but striking CGI sequence
depicting Abraham seeing the airburst’s mushroom cloud across the Jordan
Valley. The Universe: Ancient Mysteries Solved (2014) episode on the sub-
ject, ‘Heavenly Destruction’, also offers CGI sequences of this theory of an
asteroid airburst, though equivocates between Tall el-Hammam and Bab
edh-Dhra as the possible location of Sodom. Leaving the relative credibil-
ity of the competing theories in these programmes aside—all of them are
problematic for reasons that they either marginalise or omit entirely—the
relevant point here is that all the programmes essentially utilised CGI in
support of a particular theoretical narrative of the historical accounts they
are favouring, with the CGI acting arguably not just as an illustration of
theories but also as part of the evidentiary claims of the programmes in the
extent to which the ‘visuals persuade at the same time as the spoken con-
tent informs’ (Hobden 2013: 377). This kind of usage of CGI constitutes
therefore another form of subjunctive archaeological gaze, but one where
the wider criticisms of subjunctive documentary and factual entertainment
carry more weight given the imagery is constructed more from theory, and
sometimes pure belief, than from justified archaeological evidence relating
to known historical events. This is not to suggest, necessarily, that the use
of CGI in archaeological programmes is central to programmes which con-
struct narratives around archaeologically weak or invalid theories or claims
based on inadequate or even allegedly fraudulent processes or evidence as

some are alleged to have done (Evans 2012; Burleigh 2013). CGI in such
programmes, alongside other techniques like dramatic reenactments, can
serve programmes all the way along the continuum of archaeological and
documentary credibility. It is not a marker in and of itself of a programme
with lesser credibility in these regards, although the fact that it can be used
to create imagery from known historical events through to theories about
myths may be a legitimate source of anxiety, to the extent that it becomes
part of persuasive visual claims to the real.
CGI may have another more subtle influence on the kinds of sub-
ject matter and approaches to subject matter within archaeological pro-
grammes. For example, a focus on lost and destroyed civilisations has been
a common theme in archaeological television for some time as indicated
earlier (Hills 2003: 209), but there does seem to be an emerging subcat-
egory of such programmes concentrating on historical disasters. Ancient
Apocalypse, for instance, is clearly constructed around being able to theo-
rise about ancient historical and mythical events at least in part because of
the potential for showing the disasters in CGI, and the persistence of pro-
grammes on Pompeii and Atlantis in part can be attributed to CGI offering
new ways of depicting those disaster events. The benefits of CGI to cover
archaeological subjects difficult for traditional television programmes are
often constructed within this popular narrative framework of disasters. For
example, two Time Team specials have covered the topic of Doggerland,
a post-Ice Age inhabited region of Europe that joined Britain to the con-
tinent but which is now deep under the North Sea. Britain’s Drowned
World (2007) covered the archaeological techniques used in such extreme
conditions, such as relying on serendipitous finds being trawled up by fish-
ing boats, with CGI used to reconstruct the landscape environment of the
time. In Britain’s Stone Age Tsunami (2013), however, the focus is much
more clearly on evidence for a catastrophic natural disaster in the form
of a Scandinavian landslide-triggered tsunami that devastated Doggerland
and parts of the British coast and helped contribute to the eventual for-
mation of the English Channel, with accompanying CGI of that disas-
ter event. Echoing a penchant from factual entertainment producers for
an apocalyptic sublime treatment of prehistoric disasters identified in the
previous chapter, archaeology programmes also sometimes succumb to
CGI-depicted disasters-centred framework. Although the emphasis of
much CGI usage in archaeology programmes is reconstruction rather than
destruction, this opportunity not only to digitally rebuild lost cities and
144 V. CAMPBELL
so on but also to reconstruct their moments of destruction seems to be

one not overlooked by programme producers. Another trend is a focus
on military conflicts both modern and ancient, with CGI used in a variety
of ways to depict battles, from the digital sand table of Battlefield Britain
to the use of video game war simulators for imagery in Decisive Battles
(2004). The technology of the video game Rome: Total War was used both
in Decisive Battles and in the game show format series Time Commanders
(2003–2005), where two teams of ordinary members of the public con-
trol either side of a major ancient historical battle and refight it virtually,
being advised by military historians. CGI and warfare have also featured
in experimental archaeology programmes, able to offer scenes of possi-
ble ancient weapons and machines fighting epic battles such as Egyptian
chariots (Building Pharaoh’s Chariot), Byzantine fireships (Machines Time
Forgot, ‘Fireship’) and Korean turtle ships (Ancient Discoveries, ‘Impossible
Naval Engineering’, 2008).
REENACTMENTS AND THE DYNAMIC SUBLIME

CGI in archaeology programmes also intersects routinely with another prac-
tice within documentary techniques that is often seen as problematic for
documentary claims to the real, the use of reenactments. Reenactments are
used in a variety of ways across documentary in general with Nichols sug-
gesting at least five different uses of reenactment: as part of ‘realist dramati-
zation’, the recreation of specific events; for ‘typifications’, that is recreations
of typical events; as non-realist ‘Brechtian distanciation’; as ‘stylization’
reflecting emotional states of participants (such as through the use of anima-
tion); and for ‘parody and irony’ to subvert accounts that are being reen-
acted (2008: 84–86). Realist dramatisations and typifications have been a
feature of archaeological documentary for a long time; indeed this goes all
the way back to some of the founders of documentary albeit in a rather
more duplicitous manner, such as in Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922)
where an historical Inuit lifestyle was in effect being reenacted for the pur-
poses of the film (Winston 2008: 108). Creative experiments with more
transparently stylised reenactments have featured for a long time in histori-
cal documentaries as well, such as in Peter Watkins’ use of a pseudo-news
reporting technique, ‘interviewing’ battle participants in Culloden (1964).
The combination of high-quality dramatised reenactments (as in quality of
performances and production values) in the context of high-quality graphic
verité CGI has been acclaimed within the archaeological community in pro-
grammes where an appropriate ‘balance between evidential fact and creative

narrative’ is perceived to result in ‘very powerful television, which is also
powerful history and powerful archaeology’ (Henson 2006: 2). When situ-
ated within the relevant archaeological evidence, as is argued for Pompeii:
The Last Day (by Henson 2006) and Atlantis: End of a World, Birth of a
Legend (by Hobden 2013: 375), at least some archaeologists see no intrinsic
problem with the extensive use of either dramatised reenactments or CGI
in relation to the validity of the archaeological claims of the programmes.
Once again, this shows how generalised criticisms of particular documentary
and factual entertainment techniques as somehow intrinsically undermining
science don’t take sufficient account of the varying uses of these techniques
within particular sciences. Moreover, they show how criticisms within docu-
mentary theory of these techniques as somehow lacking in authenticity and
credibility also ignore the contexts of the scientific information and ideas
that can be, and sometimes have to be, conveyed through techniques that
enable the production of impossible pictures, in this case of historical events
and objects. Like the use of CGI, reenactments play a role in the persuasive
claims to the real of archaeology programmes. Nichols asserts:
Although it is possible, especially with realist dramatizations and typifica-

tions, to think that reenactments contribute historical evidence, what they
more commonly contribute is persuasiveness. They fulfill an affective func-
tion. For documentaries belonging to the rhetorical tradition, reenactments
intensify the degree to which a given argument or perspective appears
compelling, contributing to the work’s emotional appeal, or convincing,
contributing to its rational appeal by means of real or apparent proof. (2008:
88, emphasis added)
Piccini notes, in relation to programmes offering a ‘romantic’ vision of the

Celts, however, that whilst it is possible that representations may be per-
suasive, they are typically ‘constructed by highly urban film makers’ result-
ing in ‘prehistory-as-wished-for’ (1996: 92) or in other words resulting
in subjunctive documentary. Performance, scripts and direction may give
affective persuasiveness to an historical reenactment but do not necessarily
add to the truth-claims of the documentary.
Whilst this may indeed be the case, some reenactments in archaeology
programmes can go beyond a purely affective form of persuasion and offer
potential evidentiary weight because of the role that reenactment has as
a wider practice within archaeology (Agnew 2004) that feeds back into
146 V. CAMPBELL
archaeology television programmes. Unlike concerns about the validity of

reenactments and dramatic staging in other kinds of factual entertainment
(like contemporary docu-soaps), the role of reenactment societies, some-
times as a foregrounded part of the evidentiary claims of programmes,
for instance, signals a different status for reenactment in archaeological
factual television. There is a clear link between experimental archaeology
and reenactment societies as the practices of making and using tools and
weapons, preparing food, clothing and how people lived are often best
understood by reenactment societies, and representatives of a variety of
groups reenacting different eras have appeared on numerous programmes.
Amongst the programmes commemorating the 200th anniversary of the
Battle of Waterloo, for example, one History Channel programme had
sequences with actor Sean Bean (who played the titular Napoleonic fic-
tional hero in the television series Sharpe (1993–1997, 2006–2008))
interacting with Napoleonic reenactors, shooting rifles and firing can-
non and so on (Sean Bean on Waterloo 2015). The practices of reenactors
both off- and on-screen ‘contribute to a vivification of that for which they
stand. They make what it feels like to occupy a certain situation, to per-
form a certain action, to adopt a particular perspective more visible and
more vivid’ (Nichols 2008: 88).
The intersection of this idea of reenactment as a form of histori-
cal engagement and factual entertainment television has resulted in the
emergence of ‘investigative reenactment’ (Agnew 2004; Cook 2004) pro-
grammes where it is not actors performing scripted scenes but a group of
volunteers aiming to try and experience historical peoples’ lives. Although
consonant with the rise of reality TV and factual entertainment, in fact,
this kind of programme has a long precedent in archaeological pro-
grammes with the BBC series Living in the Past (1978) following a small
group of people living in an Iron Age settlement for a year, appearing
only a few years after what are generally considered to be the first reality
TV-style programmes, the BBC’s The Family (1974) and its precursor An
American Family (1973). In the last 10–15 years, more of these kinds
of programmes have appeared, with a particular strand of programmes
emerging after the success of The 1900 House (1999), which placed a vol-
unteer family into a house laid out as in a late Victorian-era manner and
making them live according to the conditions of the time. Other similar
programmes followed, looking at different eras such as World War II in
1940s House (2001), and variations appeared in a number of countries
such as Frontier House (2002) in the USA and Outback House (2005)
in Australia. Reality TV programme formats putting ordinary people in

unusual locations and situations have become a central trope of modern
television, moving away from historical or archaeological concerns to
some extent from an initial flurry of such programmes in the early 2000s,
but it has not been abandoned entirely with programmes like 10,000 BC
(2015) revisiting the format in an historical/archaeological context.
The general format of these programmes involves a group of people
attempting to experience some aspect of life in an historical period, whether
an ancient settlement, historical household or, in the case of The Ship:
Retracing Cook’s Endeavour Voyage (2002) life on an eighteenth-century
sailing ship, attempting to recreate the voyages of Captain Cook. Alexander
Cook, who worked on the series, offered an incisive critique of the ben-
efits and limitations of such programmes, highlighting three issues (2004).
First, Cook suggests that such programmes suffer from the ‘problem of
analogy’ (2004: 489), in the sense that no matter how long a modern
person spends attempting to live like an historical person, their perspec-
tive is still essentially that of their modern existence, a similar problem to
that noted by Piccini above about the perspectives of programme-makers
being intrinsically modern. Second, Cook identifies a ‘problem of focus’
(2004: 489), whereby a tension emerges between the historical story to be
told and the story of the reenactors’ experiences as a dramatic narrative in
its own right, which can arguably compromise the historical story (ibid.:
490). Like the creation of investigative teams in experimental archaeology
shows from a variety of backgrounds apparently to generate conflict, argu-
ments and disagreements to give such programmes a dramatic dimension,
so reenactment programmes have a tendency to focus on interpersonal
conflicts as well (these often being part of the appeal of more straight-
forward entertainment-oriented programmes using similar kinds of forced
experience formats, like Big Brother or Survivor). Third, and perhaps most
interestingly, Cook identifies ‘a persistent tendency to privilege a visceral,
emotional engagement with the past at the expense of a more analytical
treatment’ (2004: 490). Agnew, also writing about The Ship, concurs with
this view noting how such programmes centre on the experiences of the
participants over and above wider archaeological and historical questions,
stating in particular that ‘the privileging of experience tends to sacrifice
broader interpretative questions, investigating the self in place of the politi-
cal. Indeed, reenactment is often avowedly apolitical, purporting not to take
a stance vis-à-vis the past’ (2004: 334). In relation to The Ship’s reconstruc-
tion of the voyage of Endeavour, the geopolitical significance of Captain
148 V. CAMPBELL
Cook’s discoveries is particularly important, so programmes marginalising

such issues in favour of discussion of the experiential are notable. Moreover,
it reproduces a pattern noted in the chapters so far, and which will be seen
in the next chapter too, of the general marginalisation or omission of the
geopolitical dimensions of the scientific subjects under consideration. This
shift of attention from the interpretive and analytical to a concentration on
the experiential in investigative reenactment, however, is evocative of the
Burkean sublime. Agnew asserts that in these programmes:
Reenactment emerges as a body-based discourse in which the past is reani-

mated through physical and psychological experience. Suffering features
largely in this medium: reenactors testify, for example, to the trials of sail
handling; the privation of hunger, claustrophobia, and seasickness; the
humiliation of powerlessness, homesickness, and fear; and the unparalleled
exuberance of landfall. This is what Edmund Burke would have called the
“sublime”, the strongest emotion the mind is capable of experiencing. Up
close, they are objects that excite ideas of pain and danger, and from a cer-
tain distance, delight. (2004: 330)
Whilst Agnew’s use of the concept of the sublime is under-theorised here,

the sentiment chimes with a concentration in contemporary factual enter-
tainment and documentary on experience as part of the affective claims to
the real that such programmes seek to make. Like space scientists climb-
ing mountains and palaeontologists conducting extinct animal necrosco-
pies as indicated in the previous two chapters, that sense of an attempt at
evoking the dynamic sublime through the representation of direct experi-
ence is also apparent in investigative reenactment archaeology shows. The
potential value and role of reenactment within experimental archaeology
and experimental history and the way it can, on occasion, be meaning-
fully explored through reality TV style ‘fish out of water’ formats reveals
again how the relationship between science and factual entertainment is
not wholly negative and corrosive on closer inspection.
CONCLUSION: BRINGING OUT THE DEAD

If investigative reenactment programmes can be construed as offering a
form of the dynamic sublime through the visceral experiences of partici-
pants in historical reenactments, it is useful to conclude this chapter by
considering a group of programmes almost diametrically opposite to them
in terms of subject matter, those centred on the historical dead. Thanks to
a variety of practices linked to preserving bodies in many cultures, com-

bined with some features of environments conducive to preservation, vari-
ous forms of human remains have been a central feature of archaeological
and wider public interest, including skeletons, bog bodies and mum-
mies. Although bodies have always been popular subjects for television
programmes, bog bodies featured in Buried Treasure in the 1950s for
instance, opportunities for programmes centred on human remains have
increased as medical imaging technologies have advanced. As with the
use of remote-sensing technologies discussed earlier in this chapter, the
consonance between medical imaging technologies and CGI have enabled
a distinctive strand of body-based archaeology programmes to emerge.
Otherwise, programmes centre on human remains as a means of engaging
with a particular historical period, such as Meet the Ancestors, Secrets of the
Stonehenge Skeletons (2013), Medieval Dead (2013–) and Mummies Alive.
Meet the Ancestors emerged at least in part as a response to the success of
Time Team. Whilst Time Team did routinely include excavation of skel-
etons in many digs, with regular appearances by forensic archaeologists
and osteoarchaeologists (such as Alice Roberts, who went on to become a
presenter of several television series like Prehistoric Autopsy mentioned in
the previous chapter), its primary focus was on buildings and settlements.
Meet the Ancestors offered a distinctive approach by comparison, focus-
ing on archaeological digs specifically where skeletons were uncovered
and focusing on the processes of analysis of skeletons, with its climactic
sequences being a facial reconstruction of a skeleton (hence ‘meeting’ the
ancestor), either via an actual sculpture, digital reconstruction or com-
bination of the two. In this way the series offered more of an attempt to
connect with historical people than Time Team typically did. In 2013, a
series revisiting and updating the evidence from the series was broadcast
called Stories from the Dark Earth: Meet the Ancestors Revisited. Medieval
Dead also offers an attempt to link skeletons to historical events and real
individuals, creating narratives linking skeletons and grave-sites to the his-
torical record as far as possible, with imagery that is largely conventional
location shooting and background reenactments (particularly of battles).
Some of the body-based programmes, however, have reflected a more
overt influence in the popularity of forensic science programmes (as dis-
cussed in Chap. 2), evidenced by series like Mummy Autopsy (2004–2005)
and History Cold Case, and individual programmes like Iceman Autopsy
(2011) and Iceman Murder Mystery (2011) both about ‘Ötzi’, the name
given to a frozen Neolithic person found in an Alpine glacier. History Cold
150 V. CAMPBELL
Case, for instance, constructs its narrative and visual style around the idea
of applying approaches from criminal forensic science to historical human
remains, treating each episode as if it were a criminal forensic ‘case’, and
conducting its investigation in a ‘mobile forensic tent’ decked out with
paraphernalia of neon lights and glass whiteboards more like the labs in
an episode of CSI than the real labs and offices depicted in, for example,
Meet the Ancestors. The full range of these different approaches to bodies
is apparent in The King in the Car Park. Partly this is a reflection of the
variety of tests done on the skeleton to determine whether or not it was
Richard III, such as dating the skeleton, analysis of the wounds, facial
reconstruction and the crucial DNA comparison with surviving relatives.
At times in the programme, tensions between the archaeological processes,
the historical drama of the find and forensic science shows emerge. At one
point, for example, the skeleton is shown rather mundanely in a cardboard
box locked in an office awaiting osteological examination, prompting the
presenter to say that if Spielberg were involved, there would be dry ice or
other effects to signal its potential significance. However, when the experts
go through an explanation of the wounds on Richard’s body, they are shot
in a darkened room, with the skeleton on a light table aping more closely
the imagery of CSI-style programmes. Phillipa Langley, the Richard III
enthusiast behind the excavation, is shown getting upset over the graphic
descriptions of wounds on the body and having to leave the room. Like
Meet the Ancestors, a climactic scene is the reveal to Langley, whose own
story is part of the programme, of a sculptured facial reconstruction based
on the skull. In the accompanying Unseen Evidence programme that con-
centrates more on the investigative processes than the historical narra-
tive, again forensic science show tropes appear such as invasive surveillance
CGI of the skeleton, highlighting areas of wounds and injuries revealed by
a variety of techniques including x-rays and CT scans.
Even where individual bodies’ identities are known, often the detective
format with a forensic framing remains a prominent approach, particularly
concerning the ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun. As new techniques
for investigating his mummy have developed, so new theories and ideas
have emerged about the potentially suspicious circumstances of his death.
Over the years, programme-makers have had a field day with this topic,
evident in programmes like The Tutankhamun Murder Mystery (aka The
Assassination of King Tut 2003), King Tut’s Mysterious Death (2009), King
Tut Unwrapped (2010), Tutankhamun: The Mystery Revealed (2010),
Tutankhamun: The Mystery of the Burnt Mummy (2013), Who Killed
Tutankhamun? (2014) and Tutankhamun: The Truth Uncovered (2014).

It should be evident here how continual claims to have ‘solved’ the ‘mys-
tery’ fail to prevent subsequent programmes offering new theories. As indi-
cated earlier, this is often related to whose theories are being presented and,
sometimes with Tutankhamun, these theories are those of detectives rather
than historians or archaeologists.
The series Mummies Alive returns this discussion back to earlier parts
of this chapter and the identification of a subjunctive archaeological gaze,
linked to a focus on the visual technologies of both archaeology and fac-
tual entertainment. The series doesn’t cover new cases, revisiting bodies
like Ötzi the iceman, but does represent them in a manner that differs from
the other body-based shows in two regards. As well as having investiga-
tors examine the bodies directly, the programme has forensic pathologist
Richard Shepherd inspecting bodies virtually via a tabletop touchscreen
computer, zooming into and out of various images and scans as though able
to reveal more from the digital images than from the bodies themselves in
what is quite overtly a subjunctive archaeological gaze. Yet the series goes
even further by offering reenactments of the circumstances leading up to
the various individuals’ deaths, not via the standard technique of dramatic
reenactments with live actors, nor even through a combination of live action
footage and CGI (like Virtual History: The Plot to Kill Hitler mentioned in
Chap. 1) but entirely through graphic verité CGI. Whilst each programme
builds to a particular conclusion as to the circumstances and causes of a
body’s death, the CGI reenactments are revised as different theories are
considered and ruled in or out, such as whether Ötzi’s wounds indicate
a fight or murder, and whether he was an aggressor or innocent victim of
violence. By choosing to use CGI to entirely reconstruct and animate mum-
mies, we arguably see in Mummies Alive the appearance of another form of
the subjunctive sublime suggested in Chap. 3, whereby the image-based
technologies of forensic archaeology interweave with graphic verité CGI to
suggest an unbounded capacity of CGI technology to reconstruct the past.
Whether or not Mummies Alive represents a likely future trend for
archaeology programmes to use full CGI reenactments is not clear. Virtual
History: The Plot to Kill Hitler didn’t lead to a noticeable increase in the
use of CGI in relation to the actual depiction of historical figures, and
it may be that CGI of people is a step too far for many archaeological
programme-makers, though advances in digital animation technologies to
enable evermore persuasive CGI renderings of people may see that change
in the decades to come. What is clear from the discussion in this chapter,
152 V. CAMPBELL
however, is that whilst the broad themes and formats of archaeology pro-
grammes continue to persist as they have done from the early days of televi-
sion, techniques from factual entertainment have contributed in significant
ways to the visual and narrative styles of archaeology programmes. In
particular, evidentiary approaches in archaeology programmes that draw
heavily on CGI reconstructions of artefacts, monuments, cities and even
people see the techniques of subjunctive documentary intersecting with
the archaeological gaze in ways that sometimes reinforce archaeological
claims to knowledge through presenting engaging and affective represen-
tations of the past, built upon a combination of genuine archaeological
technologies with those of subjunctive documentary. Yet at the same time,
and more problematically, the use of subjunctive documentary techniques
can also be and is also being applied to theories, beliefs and myths contrary
to established archaeological knowledge. In an increasingly flattened land-
scape as Hale describes it (2006: 239), with a proliferation of channels and
platforms, separating out real archaeology from pseudoarchaeology may
prove increasingly different, and a focus purely on the use of factual enter-
tainment techniques is not necessarily a straightforward means of doing so.
REFERENCES
Agnew, V. (2004). Introduction: What is reenactment? Criticism, 46(3),
327–339.
Beale, T. W., & Healy, P. F. (1975). Archaeological films: The past as present.
American Anthropologist, 77(4), 889–897.
Bonacchi, C. (2013). Audiences and experiential values of archaeological televi-
sion: The case study of Time Team. Public Archaeology, 12(2), 117–131.
Burleigh, N. (2013, January 29). A feud between biblical archaeologists goes to
court. Time. http://world.time.com/2013/01/29/a-feud-between-biblical-
archaeologists-goes-to-court/. Accessed 21 July 2015.
Clack, J., & Brittain, M. (Eds.). (2007). Archaeology and the media. Walnut Creek:
Left Coast Press.
Cline, E. H. (2008). TV and the near Eastern archaeologist. Near Eastern
Archaeology, 71(3), 172–174.
Cook, A. (2004). The use and abuse of historical reenactment: Thoughts on
recent trends in public history. Criticism, 46(3), 487–496.
Evans, C. A. (2012, April 22). The so-called Jesus Discovery. Huffington Post. http://
www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-a-evans/the-socalled-jesus-discov_b_1425104.
html. Accessed 21 July 2015.
Goldhill, S. (2012). Edward Bulwer Lytton and the archaeological gaze; or, what’s
in a skull? Representations, 119(2), 92–118.
Hale, C. (2006). The Atlantean box. In G. G. Fagan (Ed.), Archaeological fanta-
sies: How pseudoarchaeology misrepresents the past and misleads the public.
London: Routledge.
Henson, D. (2006). Television archaeology: Education or entertainment? Institute
of Historical Research Conference publications. http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/
4329/1/Television_Archaeology_Education_or_Entertainment.pdf. Accessed
20 June 2015.
Hills, C. (2003). TV review: What is television doing for us? Reflections on some
recent British programmes. Antiquity, 77, 206–211.
Hobden, F. (2013). The archaeological aesthetic in ancient world documentary.
Media, Culture and Society, 35(3), 366–381.
Holtorf, C. (2005). From Stonehenge to Las Vegas: Archaeology as popular culture.
Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.
Holtorf, C. (2007). Can you hear me at the back? Archaeology, communication
and society. European Journal of Archaeology, 10(2–3), 149–165.
Holtorf, C. (2008). TV archaeology is valuable storytelling. Near Eastern
Archaeology, 71(3), 176–179.
Kahana, J. (2009). Introduction: What now? Presenting reenactment. Framework,
50(1 and 2), 46–60.
Killebrew, A. E. (2008). Archaeology and the media: A review. Near Eastern
Archaeology, 71(3), 179–180.
King, K. (2004). Historiography as reenactment: Metaphors and literalizations of
TV documentaries. Criticism, 46(3), 459–475.
Kosso, P. (2006). Introduction: The epistemology of archaeology. In G. G. Fagan
(Ed.), Archaeological fantasies: How pseudoarchaeology misrepresents the past and
misleads the public. London: Routledge.
Kulik, K. (2006). Archaeology and British television. Public Archaeology, 5(1),
75–90.
Kulik, K. (2007). A short history of archaeological communication. In T. Clack
& M. Brittain (Eds.), Archaeology and the media. Walnut Creek: Left Coast
Press.
LaFollette, M. C. (2013). Science on American television: A history. Chicago:
Moberg, C. (1985). Archaeology in the television age. Archaeology, 38(4), 80, 75.
Morgan, C. (2014). Archaeology and the moving image. Public Archaeology,
13(4), 323–344.
Moshenka, G. (2013). The archaeological gaze. In A. González-Ruibal (Ed.),
Reclaiming archaeology: Beyond the tropes of modernity. London: Routledge.
Nichols, B. (2008). Documentary reenactment and the fantasmic subject. Critical
Inquiry, 3(1), 72–89.
154 V. CAMPBELL
Piccini, A. (1996). Filming through the mists of time: Celtic constructions and the
documentary. Current Anthropology, 37(Suppl 1), S87–S111.
Piccini, A. (2007). Faking it: Why the truth is so important for TV archaeology. In
T. Clack and M. Brittain (Eds.), Archaeology and the Media. Walnut Creek, CA:
Left Coast Press.
Piccini, A., & Henson, D. (2006). A survey of heritage television viewing figures.
Council for British Archaeology Publications. http://www.archaeologyuk.org/
publications/bulletin/issue1. Accessed 22 June 2015.
Prince, S. (2012). Digital visual effects in cinema: The seduction of reality. New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Silberman, N. A. (2008). Still not ready for primetime. Near Eastern Archaeology,
71(3), 174–176.
Sperry, J. A. (2008). “Giant strides” in documentaries, “Ascents” in archaeology:
Nautical archaeology’s relationship with and place within popular culture. The
International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 3(2), 335–346.
Stoddart, S., & Malone, C. (2001). Editorial. Antiquity, 75, 459–486.
CHAPTER 6
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Extreme

Weather and Natural Disasters
INTRODUCTION
Previous chapters have focused on really quite specific areas of scientific
activity, palaeontology, archaeology and so on, which can be mapped quite
easily onto particular bodies of documentary and factual entertainment
television output. In this chapter the body of programmes considered is
a clearly identifiable group in terms of topics and themes but one which
covers quite a wide array of scientific disciplines across the earth and atmo-
spheric sciences. In fact these programmes are arguably part of an even
wider group of factual programmes, centred on the theme of disasters in
one form or another. Colloquially, and to some extent demonstrated in
sub-groupings of factual programmes in this area, disasters are thought
of as consisting of two types—technological and natural. Technological
disasters are most typically associated with events where human technol-
ogy and the built environment go wrong, from transportation accidents,
covered by programmes like Mayday (aka Air Crash Investigation 2003–),
to bridge collapses, nuclear accidents and so on. Natural disasters are asso-
ciated with natural hazards such as hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes and
tsunamis (Svensen 2009: 14). However, disaster researchers, both those
specialising in disaster management and those focused on the mediation
of disasters, have shown how that distinction is largely a false one as the
relationship between a natural hazard and whether or not it causes a disas-
ter is dependent on human agency, such as human settlements being built
close to active volcanoes, in tornado ‘alleys’, on floodplains and so on,

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-38538-3_6
156 V. CAMPBELL
turning ‘natural’ hazards into ‘unequally distributed and socialized haz-

ards’ (Pantti et al. 2012: 18; see also Clarke 2006). Moreover, having
once been seen as entirely beyond human control and causation, since
the discovery of anthropogenic climate change, evidence is also mount-
ing of possible human impacts on the long-term frequency and intensity
of extreme weather and natural hazards (Svensen 2009; McGuire 2012).
The predominance of documentary and factual entertainment pro-
grammes on weather and ‘natural’ disasters can be partly explained by a
combination of the easy availability of technologies to capture imagery of
disaster events generating footage (of which more below), and also the
occurrence of a number of particularly large-scale and dramatic disaster
events to have occurred in the televisual age, such as the Boxing Day
tsunami of 2004, Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans in 2005, the
Japanese tsunami of 2011 and Hurricane Sandy hitting New York in 2012.
A deeper, underlying reason for a concentration of programmes on disas-
ters is how such programmes can be seen as examples of the emergence
of the ‘risk society’ (Beck 1992). Beck offered a seminal account of how
contemporary society has become increasingly engaged with questions of
systemic risk to society’s survival, and within the concept of the risk society
the media are seen as a key site both for ‘defining risks’ (Beck 1992: 23)
and for the social construction of risks themselves and social responses
to them (Cottle 1998: 9). From this perspective a range of scholars have
positioned the media at the centre of the social construction of natural
disasters and their associated risks (Kitzinger 1999; Bakir 2010; Pantti
et al. 2012) as well as public understanding of climate change and the envi-
ronment more generally (Lakoff 2010). Much research on the mediation
of disasters, however, has concentrated predominantly on the news media,
which tend to focus their coverage on the immediate vicinity of disaster
events, thus ‘ignoring long-term, continuous, complex, multi-causal or
hypothetical risks’ (Bakir 2010: 6; see also Kitzinger 1999: 62). Evidence
also suggests that even in news reporting on long-term risks like climate
change, it is natural disaster imagery that predominates (Lester and Cottle
2009). Many technologically oriented disaster programmes are similarly
focused in this manner on particular disasters and accidents, addressing the
specific events, causes and consequences of those events but rarely, if ever,
looking to the wider context of such incidents, such as the risk probabili-
ties of recurrence, the state of preparedness of the authorities to respond
and so on. For example, in the series Disaster Eyewitness (2011) a sequence
in one episode showing a major bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007
EARTH AND ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES: EXTREME WEATHER AND NATURAL … 157
covered the causes of the specific collapse but didn’t address the degree of
risk of similar collapses across the rest of the USA. Although programmes
on technological disasters are undoubtedly of interest in their own right
in this sense, this chapter is focused predominantly on those programmes
that cover extreme weather, natural hazards and ‘natural’ disasters, where
issues of long-term and hypothetical risks have at least in some senses been
more explicitly considered. Grouped primarily around extreme weather
and ‘natural’ disasters, such programmes incorporate a wide range of sci-
entific areas within their remit, including areas such as meteorology, vol-
canology, seismology, geology, climatology and so on. Another reason for
focusing on these programmes is that natural hazards and the complexities
of human/nature interactions with regard to disasters are a particularly live
site of contestation of rationalist approaches to risk because they are key
exemplars of the limitations of conventional science. Firmly in the realm
of post-normal science, whereby classical Enlightenment notions of science
as capable of comprehending all and enabling absolute human control
over nature run into the problems of the complexities and uncertainties
of the processes underpinning natural hazards (Marshall and Picou 2008).
The intrinsic limitations of scientific capacity regarding natural hazards,
such as predicting, preventing or mitigating earthquakes, volcanoes, hur-
ricanes and asteroid strikes, leave a perpetual degree of uncertainty over
such events, and as Adams suggests, societies ‘do not respond blankly to
uncertainty. We impose meaning(s) upon it.’ (Adams 2003: 92). The clear
opening for representations of ‘what if’ scenarios within factual treatments
of weather and natural hazard risks (as well as fictional treatments) has
been firmly taken up, yet such programmes have rarely been incorporated
into analyses of the mediation of disasters (Campbell 2014). In many ways
this is surprising given the greater potential of the longer documentary
form to cover the topics with fuller depth and diversity than mainstream
news, and through which to construct and impose a variety of meanings
on natural disasters. As this chapter will show, one possible reason for this
is how such programmes tend to marginalise or avoid altogether narrative
frameworks which engage directly with the politics of environmental risks,
leaving them to have travelled somewhat under the critical radar compared
to programmes which have taken overtly politicised approaches from the
outset. A variety of documentaries have engaged with the politics of envi-
ronmental risk, climate change and human agency in ‘natural’ disasters,
such as Al Gore’s climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth
(2006) and Spike Lee’s documentary about Hurricane Katrina When the
158 V. CAMPBELL
Levees Broke (2006). This is also true of some programmes which have
focused on the politics of possible technological disasters, such as Day
After Disaster (2009) which explores the USA’s internal responses to an
imagined terrorist nuclear attack on Washington, and Blackout (2013)
which used a docudrama format imagining a terrorist attack knocking out
Britain’s national grid, and using camcorder/mobile phone footage to
record the events of a week without power. Such programmes are often
controversial, and follow a tradition stretching as far back as the BBC
docudrama The War Game (1965), which imagined events in Britain after
a nuclear strike and was not screened in the UK for some 20 years. In
terms of those engaging with environmental risks and natural hazards,
such programmes’ more overt engagement with the politics of risk, disas-
ter and the environment has generated some scholarly scrutiny (Button
2002; Rosteck and Frentz 2009; Weik von Mossner 2011; Hughes 2014)
alongside their often political notoriety, like Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.
The factual entertainment programmes considered in this chapter, how-
ever, have not received much academic critical scrutiny despite arguably
offering distinctive and interesting narrative constructions and visual rep-
resentations that contribute to the wider circulation of meanings around
extreme weather and natural disasters in popular culture, evident in two
key regards. First, amongst the various types of factual entertainment pro-
grammes to have generated debate and criticism amongst television critics
and producers, despite the greater presence of pro-filmic content and the
capacity for offering the traditional markers of documentary veracity (raw
footage, eyewitness testimony and expert testimony) than some of the sci-
ences considered in earlier chapters, programmes about extreme weather
and natural disasters have been amongst the most widely criticised, and even
given the pejorative label of ‘weather porn’ (Boddy 2000). Such programmes
thus allow for a closer consideration of the underlying perceptual distinction
between ‘proper’ documentary and factual entertainment television through
interrogating how such programmes utilise traditional documentary strate-
gies for making their particular claims to the real. These programmes are
also to some extent quite distinct from the types of programmes covered in
previous chapters, often covering very recent events providing the actualité
footage and eyewitness accounts that are limited or non-existent in the disci-
plines discussed so far in the book and which, superficially at least, give such
programmes the veneer of documentary claims to the real that are associ-
ated with the presence of ‘real’ footage. As such, their being singled out
for criticism as weather porn raises questions about how such programmes
utilise such footage within particular narrative formats, and whether those
visual and narrative strategies warrant criticisms as weather porn, whether

from a documentary or scientific perspective, or reflect differing ideas about
the narrative construction and representation of weather and disasters from
those of the ‘discourses of sobriety’ approach to documentary.
Second, whilst many of these programmes concentrate on contem-
porary weather events and disasters, or those in recent history accessible
through archive footage and surviving witnesses, a number of programmes
have utilised the tools of dramatic reenactments and CGI to look at disas-
ters of the deep past, hypothetical disasters of the future, and both hazards
and weather in outer space. Within the context of this book’s concerns
with tensions between science and entertainment in science documentary
and factual entertainment television, the presence of these factual enter-
tainment techniques in their considerations of long-term, hypothetical and
literally astronomical risks also makes them potentially very important sites
for analysis of the social and cultural construction and mediation of weather
and natural disasters. Building on previous work on these issues (Campbell
2014) this chapter also examines how programmes in this thematic area
that appear to shift into the subjunctive, parallel examples from previous
chapters in their building of subjunctive representations in the context of
wider frameworks within popular culture. In this chapter, the wider cul-
tural frameworks contributing to the narrative construction of weather and
disasters include the narrative approaches of disaster movies, alongside cul-
turally embedded narratives for comprehending and coping with ‘Nature’,
disasters and environmental risk. In the context of the idea of the risk soci-
ety, how these programmes construct extreme weather and natural hazards
maybe indicative of particular ways in which the complexities and political
controversies surrounding anthropogenic climate change are addressed in
media narratives beyond the news. Rather than seeing these programmes
as constructing disasters purely as forms of vicarious spectacle, it is possible
to see such programmes engaging in a long-standing narrative response to
weather and natural hazards, and particularly the problem of the predic-
tion and mitigation of their future risk and occurrence, which constructs
them as objects of the apocalyptic sublime.
WEATHER PORN
Documentary and factual entertainment programmes about extreme
weather and natural disasters have been around for some decades, but it
has only been since the late 1990s that journalists and television critics
have begun to call some of them ‘weather porn’ (Robins 1998; Boddy
160 V. CAMPBELL
2000). The use of the term has extended to what is perceived to be an

unseemly and excessive focus on the weather in television news as well
(AP 2014), though it refers mainly to factual television programmes.
Gorman defines weather porn as:
Shows that deliver images of tornadoes uprooting houses, hurricanes bashing

wharves and floods drowning cities. The idea is that these shows deliver the
same kind of vicarious physical kick—only to a more northerly portion of the
anatomy. (2009: 4)
Gorman cites the programme Destroyed in Seconds (2009), which like

a few of the programmes considered in this chapter uses imagery of
both technological and natural hazards, as having refined the formula
down to offering only ‘the money shot’ of the moment of destruction,
indicative of production expenses having been centred on producing that
image (in pornography it typically refers to the moment of male ejacula-
tion) (2009: 4). Describing the programme Human Voltage: Struck by
Lightning (2009), Doyle continues the linguistic comparison to pornog-
raphy, describing it as:
All very pop science and highly watchable, because it’s so visually alluring
and the human-interest stories are made compelling. But it’s still part of
the fetishizing of lightning, a trend under way for some years. (2009: 3,
emphasis added)
Like other categories of content, such as coverage of war and terrorism

labelled ‘war porn’ (Parton 2015), horror films dubbed ‘torture porn’
(Jones 2012) and the presence of ‘landscape porn’ in documentaries
about the countryside (Wheatley 2011), the use of this label in relation
to the weather indicates a view that the depictions of the subject matter
involve an excess of lurid spectacle, sensationalism, gratuity and arousal
(as opposed to, say, concentrating on scientific information or educa-
tion). The label has not been restricted to the usual suspects for pejora-
tive judgements as programmes from the likes of Discovery (Gorman
2009) and National Geographic (Doyle 2009), programmes from the
Weather Channel in the USA (Patterson 2000), programmes from the
commercial broadcaster ITV in the UK (James 2009) and even several
programmes from the BBC (Gorelangton 2002; Preston 2007) have
been described this way. This is uniformly a pejorative term amongst
television critics, as demonstrated by Gorelangton’s excoriation of the

BBC series Wild Weather (2002):
An expensive and fatuous series in which [journalist] Donal MacIntyre

flies to exotic locations and blathers on about “nature in all its awesome
power”- cue a lot of swirly maps, special effects, groovy music and softcore
weather porn. (2002: 53)
Such programmes, therefore, are essentially not regarded as particularly fol-

lowing the idea of either science or documentary as discourses of sobriety,
so much as offering discourses of spectacle and vicarious pleasure, although
despite their often disdainful attitude towards such programmes, these
writers routinely recognise their audience appeal (Robins 1998: 13). The
titles of many of these programmes would superficially appear to substanti-
ate this perception of audience-grabbing sensationalism, with regular refer-
ences to ‘extreme’, ‘wild’ and ‘weird’ weather; appeals to scale in titles such
as Supervolcano (2005), Superstorm (2007), Super Comet: After the Impact
(2007), Catastrophe (2008) and Global Catastrophe (2007); and evocation
of images of power and aggression in titles such as Savage Planet (2000), the
Restless Earth Collection (2003), Full Force Nature (2006), Raging Planet
(2008), Nature’s Fury (2009) and Angry Planet (2007–2010). On occasion
programmes seem to offer even a frivolous consideration of extreme risk and
disaster, for instance in a number of programmes listing potential threats
to human existence, such as End: Day (2005), Last Days on Earth (2006)
and End of the World Night (2015). Common to these programmes is the
depiction of the risk of asteroid impact, a concern of many ‘weather porn’
programmes arguably fuelled by the roughly contemporaneous discovery
of the Chicxulub impact crater that may have caused the death of the dino-
saurs, and the enormous impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on the planet
Jupiter in the early 1990s captured by major telescopes around the world.
An emerging theme in space science programmes in recent years has been a
specific focus on weather and natural hazards in space from solar storms to a
variety of forms of volcano on other planets and moons and so on. Here too,
evidence of a weather porn orientation is inherent in programme titles, such
as The Universe episode ‘Wildest Weather in the Cosmos’ (2009).
Another dimension of the weather porn critique is the extent to which
such programmes are indicative of the changing production environment,
in that they are comparatively cheap to produce and, crucially, to re-version
for different markets around the world through practices such as using a
162 V. CAMPBELL
localised voice-over, or re-editing a programme for pacing, focus and style

to suit local markets (Robins 1998: 13). Many of the programmes consid-
ered in this chapter have been repackaged in this way, for instance, World’s
Worst Natural Disasters (2013) in the UK was screened in the USA as Top
Ten Natural Disasters, and many are still in global syndication. In particular,
as mentioned earlier, weather programmes additionally suit the production
environment because ‘innovations in cheap home-video technology also
mean that many more people can now capture such disasters for posterity
and for our delectation’ (Patterson 2000: 6). The rise of programmes largely
constructed around footage captured by ordinary people on camcorders
and mobiles is certainly a notable feature in programmes on weather and
disasters, but associating the mere presence of such footage with notions of
cheap or sensationalist production values over-simplifies how such footage
is used in different programmes. Those like Destroyed in Seconds or Disaster
Eyewitness, for instance, often consist of little more than sequences of ama-
teur footage of disaster events, with a brief explanatory voice-over narration.
Some of these programmes, such as The Year the Earth Went Wild (2005,
and a separate but identically titled programme in 2011), Britain’s Most
Extreme Weather (2014) and The World’s Wildest Weather (2014) more sys-
tematically incorporate presenter-led segments, expert interviews and sym-
bolic expositional CGI providing explanations of the causes behind specific
events and contextualising the amateur footage of the events themselves.
As stated in Chap. 2, the notion of validity of different types of actu-
alité footage within documentary being fluid not fixed is demonstrated
by comparing disaster documentaries with other kinds of documentary.
The pristine, perfectly framed, close-up of animals in the wild is a marker
of documentary quality and validity in natural history films, for example,
but in disaster documentaries the presence of amateur footage has become
a signal of veracity and authenticity—indicating through the lack of pro-
fessional framing, focus, camera movement and so on that this is a “real”
disaster event being experienced. Alongside footage from CCTV cameras,
news cameras and the widespread use of cameras by first responders, such
as police-car dashboard cameras, amateur footage captured from cam-
corders and mobile phones has become increasingly central to the claims
to authenticity of disaster documentaries and factual entertainment pro-
grammes. An indication of the importance of this to disaster programmes’
claims to the real comes from those which offer dramatised sequences of
disasters from the deep past or hypothetical future. In these programmes,
much like the lens flare of space science programmes or the spit on the
lens images of extinct animal shows, sequences digitally recreate the kinds
of camera shake, blurred focus and image quality of footage ‘captured’ on
CCTVs, camcorders and mobile phones, as seen in programmes like Perfect
Disasters (2006) and the factual dramas Supervolcano and Superstorm. The
use of such visual tropes constituting a form of verisimilitude and realism
within fiction films, in the subgenre of the so-called found footage films
like the horror film The Blair Witch Project (1999) and the monster movie
Cloverfield (2008), blurs the boundaries between documentary and fiction
films in a similar way to the use of lens flare in space science documen-
taries as discussed in Chap. 3. Techniques which may have a legitimate
grounding in the actual (or likely) nature of filming of events like disasters
could, at least in part, also be influenced by the need for correspondence
to trends in the mediated imagery of those events, particularly those of
fiction, in this case disaster movies, which audiences may have more expe-
rience of. In 2014 a found footage disaster movie Into the Storm appeared,
blurring the boundaries still further.
Unlike deep space or deep time, however, the proximity of extreme
weather and natural disasters to audiences’ lived experiences arguably
gives actual (and to some extent even virtual) amateur footage a height-
ened level of claims to the real in comparison to professionally filmed
content. National Geographic’s series of Witness programmes offer a par-
ticularly interesting illustration of this in how they consist almost entirely
of amateur footage of disaster events, save for a few inter-titles, unaired
television news footage and/or occasional brief narration. Jon Siskel and
Greg Jacobs originally produced a one-off programme using this tech-
nique to construct 102 Minutes that Changed America (2008) which con-
sisted entirely of amateur and unaired news footage of the 9/11 attacks,
chronologically edited together starting from the moment the first plane
hit to the second tower falling. The Witness programmes followed the
same strategy, covering events such as Hurricane Katrina in the Emmy-
winning Witness: Katrina (2010), tornados in Witness: Tornado Swarm
2011 (2011) and the Japanese tsunami of 2011 in Witness: Disaster in
Japan (2011). This group of programmes have been fêted for their dis-
tinctive approach, giving an experiential sense of disaster events from the
point of view of those caught up in them, in contrast to news and other
documentary accounts perceived to minimise the disaster victims’ experi-
ences in favour of official accounts and perspectives, both political and
scientific (Button 2002). The experiential, first person visual perspective
offered by these programmes certainly demonstrates how the use of
164 V. CAMPBELL
amateur footage need not be seen as simply a cheap source of low-quality

visual material, though there are other ways in which they are problematic
in their narrative construction and representation of disasters.
One of these problems is a wider problem of weather porn and, indeed,
of the mediation of disaster more generally. Critiques of the mediation of
disasters from within the disaster management and disaster communica-
tion research and practitioner communities point to the tendency of the
media to focus on quite narrow parts of disasters. Disasters can be thought
of in many different regards and two important dimensions are the phases
of disaster (Perez-Lugo 2004) and the kinds of capital on which disasters
impact (Miles and Morse 2007). The phases of disaster are as follows: pre-
paredness, impact, response, recovery and mitigation (Perez-Lugo 2004:
212). News media are criticised for concentrating on the impact and imme-
diate response phases, rather than the longer term processes of recovery
and mitigation or the more contentious area of preparedness, and distort-
ing and misrepresenting disasters as a result (Vasterman et al. 2005). In
terms of capital, disasters can impact on a number of types including natu-
ral capital (as in impacts on ecosystems), human capital (essentially loss
of life), social capital (impacts on communities’ infrastructure) and built
capital (as in cities, buildings, bridges, etc.) (Miles and Morse 2007: 372).
Again, news media are criticised in this sense for their perceived tendency
to de-emphasise natural capital compared to the other types of capital
(Miles and Morse 2007: 372).
What marks weather porn out in terms of its visual composition, and in
this sense the Witness programmes do this too, is how it is predominantly
focused on the impact phase of disasters, and the consequences of disas-
ter impacts on built capital. Title sequences routinely incorporate impact
imagery for instance, and it is notable how a focus on impact is present
regardless of the contextual focus of the programmes. Whether historical,
contemporary, or a hypothetical future disaster, there is a broad concentra-
tion on impact imagery across most of these programmes. Much like the
focus on megafauna in extinct animal shows discussed in Chap. 4, the extent
to which impact imagery is prevalent is somewhat normalised in disaster
programmes. In some senses it seems perfectly logical for programmes on
disasters to contain imagery of disaster impacts but as indicated above it
is the degree to which impact imagery overrides other kinds of potential
imagery (such as imagery of long-term recovery, or efforts at mitigation
and preparedness) that is significant here. Programmes incorporating
amateur footage, for instance like the Witness programmes, are in effect
locked into the impact and immediate aftermath periods of disasters. Other
programmes seek to construct impact phase imagery by sending film crews
into disaster events alongside scientists such as various storm-chasing teams
in Stormchasers (2007–2012), Storm Riders (2011) or Kate Humble: Into
the Volcano (2014). The storm-chasing format extends into shows where
presenters are simply filmed in the midst of actual natural hazards, such as
in Angry Planet, Nature’s Fury and Wild Weather, whilst yet others even
recreate hazard conditions artificially, such as having a presenter experience
hurricane force winds in a wind tunnel in Britain’s Most Extreme Weather or
demolishing a house in a variety of ways in Storm City 3D (2012).
In purely visual terms, by focusing on impact imagery such programmes
effectively disconnect extreme weather and natural disasters from the wider
context in which disasters occur, an aspect that recurs in other elements of
the narrative construction of disasters in these programmes discussed later
in the chapter. Concentrating on the visual presentation for the moment,
several of these programmes utilise symbolic expositional CGI in the form
of images of globes, maps of landscapes, cross-sectional diagrams of the
Earth’s crust and the oceans and so on in explanatory sequences, but
graphic verité CGI is also evident. Even in programmes focused on con-
temporaneous disaster events with actual event footage, sometimes CGI is
used to augment impact footage with additional digitally animated scenes
of disaster, such as in World’s Worst Natural Disasters and Disaster Planet
(2010). In the latter programme, alongside archive footage of various
disaster events, dramatic reconstructions of survivors’ stories and symbolic
expositional CGI showing some of the disaster processes, graphic verité
CGI is used, even for events like the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami where a
large pool of amateur footage is available. CGI shots of the tsunami hit-
ting villages are intercut with amateur footage, for instance, as if there isn’t
quite enough impact footage thus needing CGI to add to the sensation of
impact. In World’s Worst Natural Disasters, sequences of experts explain-
ing disasters are shot on location with graphic verité CGI composited on
top, so that, for instance, an atmospheric scientist is depicted in the middle
of a tornado, or a seismologist discussing the fires in the wake of the 1906
San Francisco earthquake with a CGI backdrop of the contemporary city
ablaze. The visual focus on impacts is perhaps most evident in programmes
that reconstruct historical disasters, construct hypothetical future disasters
and depict weather and hazards in space, such as Prehistoric Megastorms
(2008), Catastrophe, Superstorm, Supervolcano, Super Comet: After the
Impact, Perfect Disasters, End: Day and Last Days on Earth. Whilst space
166 V. CAMPBELL
science, palaeontology and archaeology programmes also all often contain

images of catastrophe and disasters as part of their narratives—such as the
impact that led to the creation of the Earth and Moon, the Chicxulub
asteroid impact and disasters that wiped out civilisations—in these pro-
grammes the disaster events are the central focus of the narratives rather
than just a component part, and visually constitute the most prevalent
imagery on display.
Another dimension of the visual representation of disasters in these pro-
grammes is their predominant concentration on the destruction of built
capital. The use of television news, aid agency and rescue services’ aerial
footage of scenes of devastation, as well as sequences of disasters captured
from a distance, whether by news crews, other professional film-makers
or amateurs, has created something of a trope of disaster documentaries.
Getting to disaster zones and filming them is inevitably difficult and often
done by plane or helicopter, and both scientists and film-makers have died
getting too close to natural hazards, such as one of the teams featured in
Stormchasers who died when their vehicle was caught in a tornado in 2013
(Draper 2013). Whilst much of this kind of footage is thus often a product
of necessity rather than deliberate aesthetic choices in the case of real-life
disasters, the framing of disasters that typically results does have a particu-
lar consequence for the visual construction of disaster in factual television,
and the production of what might be called the weather porn gaze (paral-
leling, though distinct from, the gazes from above discussed in Chaps. 3
and 5). With images in long-shot, often from above, focused more often
than not on built structures visible at the filmed distance, and with humans
often reduced to specks against the built environment and the natural haz-
ards occurring, this gaze is arguably pervasive as, even where programmes
depict historical disasters in the deep past, the literal absence of built envi-
ronments is countered by imagining the historical event as if it were to occur
in the modern era, allowing for the presentation of subjunctive imagery of
ancient disasters hitting modern built environments. For example in the
series Catastrophe, about global disasters in Earth’s prehistory, images of
disasters hitting London are routinely included, such as an episode on the
‘snowball Earth’ era which sees London swallowed up by glaciers. In pro-
grammes imagining future disasters, it is again imagery of destruction of
the built environment that predominates. New York is a favoured target,
being drowned in a tsunami, whether caused by cometary impact (Super
Comet: After the Impact) or by volcanic eruption on the Canary Islands
(End: Day), deluged by a super-hurricane after failed attempts to control
the weather (Superstorm), hit by a solar storm (Perfect Disasters) or frozen

under the ash cloud of a volcanic super-eruption (Last Days on Earth).
Perhaps owing a debt to the Planet of the Apes (1968) seminal twist end
image of a ruined Statue of Liberty, many of these future disaster pro-
grammes, like many other fictional disaster movies too, incorporate scenes
of its destruction. New York isn’t the only American city to feature, how-
ever, with cities such as Houston (Super Comet), Dallas (Perfect Disasters)
and Hawaii (Ultimate Disaster 2006) also digitally destroyed by one form
of natural hazard or another. The series Perfect Disasters offered a global
array of disasters, featuring London, Hong Kong, Sydney and Montreal
alongside the American cities. The programmes Aftermath: Population
Zero (2008) and Life After People (2008–2010) both imagine unspecified
scenarios where humans suddenly and instantly disappear from Earth, and
consist of expert testimony interspersed with CGI imagery of what would
happen to the planet if this occurred. The focus of these programmes is
intrinsically centred on the built environment, as iconic landmarks like the
Eiffel Tower (see Fig. 6.1) and Brooklyn Bridge are depicted decaying
and collapsing over time without humans around to maintain them, and
with nature gradually reclaiming the landscape—a rare inclusion of natural
capital in the context of destruction and decay, and an interestingly posi-
tive one at that (in the sense of nature’s recovery after the disappearance
of humanity). These programmes also include imagery of the decay of
human technologies, like the Hoover Dam, and this is noteworthy because
despite the focus on the built environment generally, there is a distinct
absence of built landscapes like power stations, chimneys and so on. Such
Fig. 6.1 Life After People (David De Vries, History Channel, 2008)
168 V. CAMPBELL
‘cause images’ (Lester and Cottle 2009: 928) often used in news stories
about climate change alongside images of disasters are largely absent, and
the engagement with human agency and responsibility for disasters is not
only marginalised visually as the chapter will later argue.
The visual depiction of human capital (people) on the other hand is
quite different. Programmes drawing heavily on amateur footage, perhaps
inevitably, concentrate on the surviving victims of disasters—it is after all
the living who are actively filming disaster events—and the use of foot-
age from people who subsequently didn’t survive, or imagery where the
deaths of others were caught on camera by amateurs, tends to be omitted
or marginalised. Programmes using amateur or more often archival news
footage of actual disaster events do include images of the victims of human
disaster, such as the occasional dead body, perhaps obliquely on a stretcher
covered by a sheet, in extreme long-shot being washed away by a tsunami
wave or via the distance of historical still images from earlier disasters, as
in Disaster Planet. The Raging Planet episode ‘Volcanoes’ and the Restless
Earth episode ‘Volcano: Nature’s Inferno’ both include images of charred
bodies of those caught and killed by pyroclastic flows during volcanic
eruptions, whilst some other programmes used what could be called proxy
images of disaster victims, such as the dramatic body-casts of pyroclastic
flow victims from the Pompeii eruption (Last Days on Earth). Overall,
though, images of the dead are relatively rare by comparison to images of
destroyed built capital. Despite its specific focus on the most costly natural
disasters, including in terms of death tolls, the programme World’s Worst
Natural Disasters essentially shows hardly any dead people, the only close-
up of a dead body being of a sheep (as a proxy for the loss of livestock
in the 1783 Icelandic volcanic eruption). Last Days on Earth, counting
down the seven most dangerous possible disaster events, similarly offers
images of built capital in the wake of disasters, not people. Again, this
is most evident in programmes offering dramatised/CGI depictions of
disaster where images of the dead are almost entirely excluded. Despite
the likely high death tolls of the imagined disasters in the whole of the
Perfect Disasters series there is only one partial depiction of a dead body
in its dramatised sequences, and in that case it is a partial shot of the arm
of an arsonist constructed as responsible for starting wildfires in Sydney.
In Super Comet: After the Impact, similarly, there is only one brief image
of a dead body in CGI, slumped on a bridge over the Seine in Paris, suc-
cumbing to the post-impact period of freezing conditions as the Sun is
blocked out by a global ash-cloud. End: Day uses a narrative conceit of a
Groundhog Day (1993) like structure, showing the same day as if building
to a different type of disaster event, resetting the clock to the beginning of
the day in the midst of the impact phase of each hypothetical disaster. Such
programmes often state through narration or dialogue in the dramatised
sequences estimations of death tolls, but these are systematically excluded
from visual depiction. Whether this is simply a consequence of trying to
ensure programmes are viable in markets around the world, with an eye on
rules regarding taste and decency and depictions of the dead, or whether
it’s part of more deliberate aesthetic and narrative strategies in terms of
the construction of natural disasters in such programmes, that visual mar-
ginalisation of human capital as a very real and pertinent consequence of
extreme weather and natural hazards when compared to other mediations
of disaster, like news and disaster movies, is notable. In particular it high-
lights a key feature of how these programmes significantly differ in their
mediation of disasters from both news media and disaster movies in their
narrative positioning of people, in turn reflecting a distinctive position
with regard to the politics of disaster.
PEOPLE AND POLITICS: EXPERTS AND EYEWITNESSES

Returning briefly to the commentators on weather porn, one sugges-
tion as to why programmes on extreme weather and natural hazards have
become prevalent in the global multi-channel era is that, a bit like the
dinosaurs of Chap. 4, the weather is a comparatively ‘culturally neutral’
topic offering ‘politically safe programming’ (Robins 1998: 13). The ways
in which these programmes position people, especially in comparison to
news media and disaster movies, are arguably indicative of this status. Both
news and disaster movies have been noted for the ways in which they tend
to construct the role of humans within natural disasters as heroes, villains
and victims (Kakoudaki 2002; Vasterman et al. 2005; Keane 2006; Miles
and Morse 2007). In disaster movies the demands of dramatic narrative
perhaps understandably position human protagonists in these roles, and
the ‘typical disaster movie’s characters are distinguished by their jobs, sta-
tus or standing in society’ (Keane 2006: 14). Through the fates of the var-
ious characters in the narrative, disaster movies thus offer a kind of social
commentary, reflecting the ‘ideological signs of the times in which they
are made’ (Keane 2006: 14). Kakoudaki (2002) argues that this allows for
engagement of the audience with the protagonists of the films, and posi-
tions the disasters as events that ‘“we” as (an imagined collectivity of) the
170 V. CAMPBELL
characters in the film and “we” as the audience see together’ (Kakoudaki
2002: 144). Deaths in disaster movies come often as forms of morality
lessons in relation to the ‘villains’, such as overambitious developers build-
ing skyscrapers too high in The Towering Inferno (1974), or corporate and
political bosses who ignore the warnings of scientists and experts, often
meeting morally deserved fates.
News media too have been noted for representing the role of people
in disaster events in perhaps surprisingly similar ways, although the news
media have been subject to far more criticism as such, with disaster mov-
ies disparaged for their often inaccurate science but otherwise relatively
ignored by disaster communication scholars (an exception is Salvador and
Norton 2011). The concern about news and other factual forms dealing
with real disasters as opposed to fictional ones is partly in the construction
of narrative frameworks for natural disasters, and how a:
Folk-narrative nature of media coverage of disasters lends itself to the

identification of villains—from individuals to groups to technologies and
processes such as levees and wetland loss—on whom the failings of the
disaster preparedness, response and recovery can be blamed. (Miles and
Morse 2007: 366)
On the other hand, there’s a concern that processes of news reporting

and the tendency to rely heavily on official voices and the authorities have
the consequence of ‘dislocating the voices of the victims and their fami-
lies’ (Button 2002: 147). Communities experiencing disasters are thus
reduced to individualised and anecdotal accounts, limiting the potential
for media representations of disasters to place them into the social-cultural
contexts in which they actually exist (Button 2002: 147, Vasterman et al.
2005: 108). Furthermore, quite distinct from the evident agency of disas-
ter movie protagonists (the heroes at least), in factual media the reduc-
tion of disaster-hit communities to individual, anecdotal stories arguably
‘makes individuals appear to be passive victims rather than active agents
struggling politically to redefine and reframe official accounts of the disas-
ter’ (Button 2002: 147).
One of the immediately striking features of contemporary factual enter-
tainment and documentary programmes about disasters in terms of their
depiction of people is the significant absence of positioning them as vil-
lains. Even where programmes do refer to problems and failures of pre-
paredness and mitigation strategies (as in Disaster Planet for instance),
such references are rarely personalised, sustained or constructed as a live

socio-political issue. Often the narratives of such programmes construct
such failures as issues of the unanticipated scale and nature of the natural
hazard, and gaps in the scientific knowledge underpinning preparedness
and mitigation efforts (of which more in the next section). Politicians and
figures from agencies responsible for disaster response are almost entirely
absent from the majority of these programmes. People are presented in
these programmes predominantly as either scientific experts or lay eyewit-
nesses. In terms of both groups, the notion of disasters occurring within
particular socio-political contexts is routinely subordinated to an emphasis
on individualised experiential accounts, to a degree arguably even more
disconnected from the sociopolitical context than in either the news or
disaster movies.
Scientists feature essentially as the voices of authority and explanation
within these programmes’ narratives, but are depicted in several distinctive
ways. The expert ‘talking head’ shot, often in a laboratory or office context,
is used repeatedly, and this places the scientists essentially ‘outside’ of the
central disaster narrative, as seen in programmes like Prehistoric Megastorms
and Super Comet: After the Impact. Other programmes use talking head
sequences in locations related to the disaster events they’re describing, such
as Ultimate Disaster, Perfect Disasters and Life After People. Whilst these
programmes thus embed their experts in recognisable geographical loca-
tions, they are still presented as socially isolated, a single talking head in
a geographical space, and are not typically placed within actual disaster
scenarios. As mentioned earlier, World’s Worst Natural Disasters unusu-
ally does place its experts not just on location but also ‘within’ CGI of the
disaster events they’re explaining. The scientists do not react dramatically
to the CGI disaster occurring around them; atmospheric scientist Karen
Kosiba for instance is shown walking into and then standing in the eye of
a tornado, whilst calmly talking about the nature of tornadoes. This visual
distancing of scientists from the events they are describing, removed in
place, time or, in the case of World’s Worst Natural Disasters, apparently
from impact as though cocooned from effects, suggests a crucial separation
of their capacity for knowledge of disasters (knowledge which is, inciden-
tally, not contested or challenged by other perspectives) and their capac-
ity for agency. Mitigation and responsibility are not the roles offered by
the ‘talking heads’ in these programmes, who do no more than comment
on and explain the physical processes that cause disasters and the conse-
quences. There are some exceptions to this, such as the BBC programme
172 V. CAMPBELL
Kate Humble: Into the Volcano where scientists’ work on a live volcano is
shown, but more often than not they’re shown as commentators on, rather
than agents in, disasters.
Where programmes do feature scientists as active protagonists within
disaster events, there is a tendency for them to focus more on scientists’
experiences of disaster than on questions of their agency. Programmes’ nar-
ratives sometime focus on scientists’ biographies, motives and professional
achievements and dedication but here too the limits of agency are pres-
ent. For example, the Shoemakers, the married couple astronomers who
co-discovered the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet that impacted with Jupiter
in 1994, are the focus of the Restless Earth episode ‘Asteroids: Deadly
Impact’, and another episode, ‘Volcano: Nature’s Inferno’, also focused on
a famous couple, Maurice and Katia Krafft, renowned for filming volcanoes
up to their deaths in a pyroclastic flow on Mount Unzen in Japan in 1991.
Where programmes shift from a purely documentary framework to offer-
ing dramatised sequences and drama-documentary formats, scientists are
often constructed as semi-heroic protagonists. Using scientists within the
dramatic narratives allows for a degree of diegetic explanatory dialogue,
as well as lending a degree of plausibility in how some individuals survive
the often mega-disasters imagined in some programmes’ hypothetical sce-
narios, such as the large cometary impact in Super Comet: After the Impact.
Factual dramas, such as Supervolcano and Superstorm, centre their narra-
tives around groups of scientists too, but again this focus leans towards an
experiential focus on disasters, if perhaps a slightly more informed kind of
experience. Supervolcano illustrates this most clearly by using post-event
talking head sequences of a number of scientists talking about their expe-
riences in the wake of a volcanic super-eruption at Yellowstone National
Park. The interview sequences, as in conventional documentary, serve to
provide some of the scientific explanation of the events unfolding, but they
are also used for explicit personal reflection on their feelings during the
disaster event, and are entirely dramatised performances by actors. Despite
the narrative trope of documentary, in the use of the talking head, the
narrative framework in this programme is largely that of a disaster movie,
with scientists as the voices of informed, expert experience of disaster. That
dramatic, disaster movie-like positioning of scientists isn’t only present in
programmes with explicit dramatised sequences, however. Stormchasers
stands out for explicitly turning atmospheric science into a dynamic chase
narrative not unlike the disaster movie Twister (1995) in which a small
group of scientists, film-makers and enthusiasts chase storms and tornados
around the USA. It was the longest-running of several similar series to

focus on both amateur and professional stormchasers (like Storm Riders).
When the series was cancelled, one of the stormchasers regularly featured
on the series, later to die in a tornado, was apparently quite relieved as he
felt that ‘the show’s producers seemed intent on ratcheting up the drama’
at the expense of the science (Draper 2013: 4).
The wider consequence of this focus on experiences amongst the sci-
entists and experts becomes clearer when it’s considered alongside the
representation of lay eyewitnesses and survivors. Alongside the scientist
talking head, another highly common feature, and the centre of some
programmes’ narratives, is survivor and eyewitness accounts. Eyewitness
accounts are featured systematically in programmes like Disaster Planet,
make up the primary footage in programmes such as Storm Stories and Full
Force Nature, and as mentioned above, are even constructed from foot-
age shot by eyewitnesses such as the Witness programmes. Superficially,
the presence of detailed eyewitness/survivor accounts and their own foot-
age would seem to not reproduce the problem of such perspectives being
marginalised, as has been argued of the news media. Yet, on closer inspec-
tion it’s clear that here too disasters are treated as essentially a series of
isolated, individualised experiential accounts. In both Disaster Planet and
World’s Worst Natural Disasters, for example, single eyewitness accounts
are given for each disaster represented—only one person talks of their
personal experiences in disasters that affected hundreds, thousands and
sometimes millions of people. Programmes featuring more accounts, such
as Storm Stories, don’t essentially link them together as communal experi-
ences either. So whilst people are given a voice for their experiences, these
are presented in isolation, and thus are not socially situated. Therefore,
like the narrow visual perspective focused on impacts on built capital,
representations of people arguably de-contextualise the disaster events
from their wider socio-cultural and politico-economic contexts. Even
though scientists often feature as central figures, their regular representa-
tion, in terms of experience too, means that these programmes preference
immediacy and emotional response over a politically and socially situ-
ated response, paralleling the concerns expressed in the previous chapter
around a foregrounding of affective experience in investigative reenact-
ment archaeology programmes (Cook 2004; Agnew 2004).
A particularly stark illustration of this comes from comparing the
programme Witness: Katrina with Spike Lee’s documentary film about
Hurricane Katrina, When the Levees Broke. As stated earlier in the chapter, the
174 V. CAMPBELL
distinctive feature of the Witness programme was its composition of almost

entirely amateur footage taken by the citizens of New Orleans and the Gulf
Coast, with occasional bits of unaired news footage as well. The programme’s
acclaim stemmed from this focus on the eyewitnesses’ perspective, a narrative
constructed from the point of view of the disaster victims as opposed to offi-
cial, authoritative accounts that marginalised these experiences. When com-
pared to Lee’s film, however, that illusion of survivor’s perspective becomes
apparent. Witness: Katrina focuses on the immediate impact and aftermath,
on immediate survival responses of the people affected by Katrina and it
presents those experiences as captured by some of those who filmed them-
selves at the time. Lee’s film, on the other hand, made in the wake of the
hurricane, like Witness: Katrina, contains no voice-of-god extensive narra-
tion but does offer more conventional eyewitness interview sequences, con-
centrating on capturing not so much the images of impact experiences, but
the detailed stories of survivors of the hurricane, in the contexts of locations
that were important during those events and, crucially, afterwards. Lee’s film
includes interviews with a range of politicians, first responders and disaster
agency representatives, and includes discussion of conspiracy theories that
some of the levees were blown up to flood the poor parts of New Orleans
and protect the rich parts of the city. It covers a range of responses from
citizens of the city from poor and rich neighbourhoods, and all in the words
of those individuals, very clearly incorporating the socio-political context
into the Katrina narrative offered by Lee (Weik von Mossner 2011: 160–1).
Lee’s film undoubtedly had ‘villains’ in it, and the general absence of villains
in factual entertainment disaster documentaries, in favour of individualised
experiences of eyewitnesses and scientists alike, alongside often visually and
narratively dislocated scientists, raises important questions about what kinds
of overall narrative frameworks such programmes offer with regard to ques-
tions of socio-political as well as scientific responses to extreme weather,
natural hazards and their risks.
AGENCY AND RISK
The positioning of people as either experts, often dislocated from the events
they comment on, or eyewitnesses constructed in terms of their individual
experiences of disaster signals another significant feature of the narrative
construction of disasters across these programmes, and that concerns a
routine marginalisation or even complete omission of notions of human
agency in disasters which in turn links to the representation of risk and
the overall narrative framing of disasters in distinctive ways. As mentioned

earlier, disaster management practitioners are concerned not only with
issues of disaster impacts but also with the phases of preparedness, response
and mitigation, yet none of these phases receive a significant amount of
screen time in factual entertainment programmes on disasters. World’s
Worst Natural Disasters and Disaster Planet, for instance, are relatively rare
examples where issues of disaster preparedness, such as New Orleans’ hur-
ricane defences or Japan’s tsunami defences, are briefly discussed, though
the position taken routinely is that the scale of the disasters was unprec-
edented. Both programmes include a number of historical disasters where
incomplete knowledge contributed to their severity leading to changes in
processes, such as the mapping of the 1974 tornado storm season contribut-
ing to improved tornado warning technology, and how the 1883 eruption
of Krakatoa and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake led to the develop-
ment of modern volcanology and seismology, respectively. Again, no ‘vil-
lains’ are offered here to blame the disasters on, rather natural hazards are
constructed as continually presenting new and unpredictable challenges
to human efforts to cope with them. Where programmes imagine future
disasters, sometimes attempts at mitigation are presented or acknowledged
but they are routinely shown as ineffectual, such as failed attempts to dis-
rupt an imminent hurricane in Superstorm, or to push a comet off course
through nuclear explosion in Super Comet: After the Impact. On occa-
sion scientists are explicitly shown talking about the limits of their agency
in hazard risk preparedness and mitigation, such as volcanologist Peter
Hall in the Raging Planet episode ‘Volcanoes’. Such programmes then
are interesting for being significantly different to environmental advocacy
documentaries, which have what has been described as an ‘argumentative
response’ to environmental risks (Hughes 2014) premised on the capacity
for human agency and intervention. Advocacy narratives present ‘human
agency as both subject to the power of nature and effectual at interven-
ing in nature’ (Salvador and Norton 2011: 49, emphasis added). Perhaps
most notable of these is Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which not only
recounts the realities of climate change but also engages in explicit nar-
ratives of human agency in both causing and potentially mitigating and
eventually stopping climate change (Rosteck and Frentz 2009; see also
Buell 2010; Salvador and Norton 2011).
Even given that the suppression of controversy is not an uncommon
feature of science documentary (León 1999: 77), the frequent elision of
human agency in the disasters depicted is notable in factual entertainment
176 V. CAMPBELL
programmes. It is perhaps somewhat ironic that it is in some of the pro-

grammes that arguably offer the most overt weather porn characteristics,
such as those that present widely divergent types of disaster risk in league
tables or charts, that climate change (as well technological disasters we
may cause) features when it is either entirely absent or barely mentioned
in many other programmes. Last Days on Earth, for example, places cli-
mate change as the number one risk to humanity, ahead of pandemics and
nuclear war, whilst End of the World Night also referred to climate change,
though here it was placed third, behind pandemic and nuclear war. Angry
Planet is a rare example of one of these programmes where the link between
disaster events and climate change is explicitly made by its host, Canadian
stormchaser George Kourounis, referring, for example, to climate change’s
impact on the intensity of hazards such as firestorms in Australia. But such
explicit links to climate change are the exception; indeed the space science
programmes discussed in Chap. 3 consider climate change more fully than
many of these weather and disaster programmes. A full episode of Cosmos:
A Spacetime Odyssey addresses climate change, for instance, paralleling an
episode in Sagan’s original Cosmos in 1980 where the runaway greenhouse
effect on Venus is used as a warning to humankind (something of a recur-
ring trope in the representation of Venus in such programmes). That is, of
course, not to say that climate change issues aren’t discussed in other kinds
of documentaries on the environment (for a detailed analysis see Hughes
2014), but these are far less frequently broadcast than factual entertain-
ment television programmes on extreme weather and natural disasters.
Factual entertainment programmes instead seem to offer a narrative
framework for disasters much more akin to disaster movies than environ-
mental documentaries, where nature is typically presented as an ‘agent of
destruction […] outside of human agency or responsibility’ (Kakoudaki 2002:
120, emphasis added). Kakoudaki argues that a consequence of this in fiction
is that ‘human responsibility, thus, is removed from the main encounter of
the films and becomes response’ (2002: 121, original emphasis). More often
than not, disaster movies reduce human agency to the survival response in
the impact phase of disasters, so even on the rare occasions when disaster
movies couch their narratives in relation to climate change processes, such
as The Day After Tomorrow (2004), events are narratively constructed in
such a way that for the protagonists ‘there is little left to do but wait for
and survive the purification brought by nature’s retribution’ (Salvador and
Norton 2011: 60). Reflecting this very clearly, and illustrating the factual
entertainment trend for the shift to docu-soap and ‘reality’ television, is the
emergence of the National Geographic series Doomsday Preppers, mentioned

at the start of the book, which follows American survivalists convinced of
the world’s impending doom (from one reason or another, often political/
economic collapse). Preparedness for disasters in this series isn’t based on
the wider social community and mitigation efforts concerning probable risks
but individualised survival strategies for perceived inevitable risks.
The treatment of disaster risk is perhaps the most striking illustration
of how factual entertainment programmes narratively construct weather
and natural hazards. Even programmes superficially constructed around
the question of risk, such as End: Day, Last Days on Earth and End of the
World Night are concerned less with the actual degree of risk than what the
impacts of hypothetical risks might look like. End of the World Night consid-
ers ten scenarios, drawing on fiction films as starting points for discussions
with experts on impacts, consequences and likelihood. Events such as alien
invasion and the Sun stopping (as imagined in the film Sunshine 2007)
are considered alongside supervolcanos, pandemics and climate change.
Similarly, Last Days on Earth considers events like gamma ray bursts and
black holes, but even contributions from Stephen Hawking describing the
risks of these as ‘very low’ doesn’t prevent them from being included in
the scenarios imagined. Programmes dealing with actual disasters display a
kind of narrative confirmation bias, the occurrence of actual disasters cap-
tured on film seeming to override discussion of likelihood (and thus ques-
tions of preparedness and mitigation). Programmes addressing asteroid
and cometary impact, for instance, reflect this tension between questions
of preparedness and mitigation with a focus on often entirely unexpected
and unpredicted impact events, such as the Chelyabinsk meteorite impact
in 2013, as shown in Meteor Strike: Fireball from Space (2013). Whereas
such impacts are constructed narratively as examples of serendipity and
transition in cosmological events in deep space and deep time, as in space
science and palaeontological programmes’ treatment of the Chicxulub
asteroid impact discussed in previous chapters, in these programmes where
the context is nominally one of disaster risk and consequence, the degree of
risk is subsumed by confirmatory cases of impacts, as in the Raging Planet
episode ‘Fireballs from Space’ and the Restless Earth episode ‘Asteroids:
Deadly Impact’. On occasion, particularly in programmes centring on eye-
witness accounts even where risk likelihood is clearly stated the emphasis
is on confirmatory cases of impacts, such as in the Savage Planet episode
‘Deadly Skies’, for example, where the fatality rate of lightning strikes is
given as 30 %, but the narrative is dominated by eyewitness accounts of
178 V. CAMPBELL
fatal lightning strikes. In programmes dramatising hypothetical disasters

particularly, the subjunctive documentary focus overrides questions of
degrees of risk, as programmes construct scenarios of cometary impacts
(Super Comet: After the Impact), volcanic super-eruptions (Supervolcano)
and global pandemics (After Armageddon 2010). In some senses, whether
dealing with actual disaster events, recent or prehistoric, or even possible
future disasters, the programmes treat disasters essentially as inevitable,
imminent and unavoidable. Some programmes slide completely into the
subjunctive by offering impossible scenarios as the premise for their scenes
of disaster and decay, such as suddenly disappearing humans of Aftermath:
Population Zero and Life After People, the latter of which led to a follow-
up series due to its popularity and high audience ratings (Tucker 2008).
CONCLUSION: ‘NATURAL’ DISASTERS

AND THE APOCALYPTIC SUBLIME
The discussion above reveals weather porn programmes share several key
characteristics. There is a concentration on visual imagery of the impacts
on built environments of large-scale disaster events regardless of the degree
of risk, or even possibility, of such events occurring. People are presented
mainly in terms of their isolated, individualised impact experiences, some-
times including scientists and sometimes isolating them visually and nar-
ratively, but either way positioning them as commentators on rather than
agents in disaster events. In combination, these elements suggest that the
pejorative weather porn label is superficially appropriate to many of these
programmes, in that they routinely appear to construct ‘natural’ disasters
as vicarious spectacle, ‘transforming apocalypse into exciting entertain-
ment for the multitudes’ (Buell 2010: 31). But whilst such a view may
chime with some of the wider criticisms of factual entertainment televi-
sion’s treatment of science considered across this book, it doesn’t really
address how and why scenes of disasters may have appeal as entertain-
ing spectacle, as the success of shows like Life After People and Doomsday
Preppers (Raasch 2012) clearly indicates, or what that signifies for the
positioning of weather and disaster, and thus the sciences concerned
with these phenomena, in the cultural imagination. Thinking about these
issues might not validate such programmes in terms of their claims to sci-
ence, or claims to documentary, but might help in trying to understand
their prominence and appeal beyond simplistic pejorative assertions about
declining television quality, increasing scientific illiteracy and so on.
As a starting point, returning to television critics’ reactions to such pro-

grammes, Patterson links their prevalence to cultural anxieties, suggesting
at the turn of the millennium that there’s ‘something millenarian about
our love for weather-porn. It appeals to our sense of vulnerability, and pos-
sibly even to our fear of a creator’ (Patterson 2000: 6). The idea of natural
disasters being interpreted as acts of gods (or demons) stretches back far
into human history, back into the eras of animism, and persisting overtly
through the emergence of organised religions, such as in the Biblical Flood
narrative and many other kinds of religious disaster narratives (Boia 2005;
Williams 2008; Svensen 2009). Evidence exists of a persistent attention to
extreme weather and natural hazards in this sense throughout history, with
records of disasters in the Middle Ages, for instance, paralleling the appeal
of weather porn programmes today, indicating that ‘the general public
remains obsessed with climatic excesses’ as they have been for a long time
(Boia 2005: 123). That very long-standing cultural tradition for the inter-
pretation and cultural accommodation of disaster provides a really powerful
conceptual framework within which the mediation of natural disasters in
factual entertainment television occurs, involving the evocation and adap-
tation of mythic narratives or mythic frames (Ericson and Doyle 2004: 13;
Buell 2010; Salvador and Norton 2011). The traditional mythical frame-
work positions disasters as responses from Gods (or demons) to human
behaviour—punishment for ‘sins’. As Boia indicates, for example, ‘the
traditional Flood was caused by the sins of men against God. The future
Flood maybe triggered by their sins against Nature’ (2005: 12). Modern-
day advocacy approaches to environmental risk often themselves offer these
kinds of narratives with An Inconvenient Truth, for instance, being seen
in one critique as a kind of ‘Jeremiad’ narrative presenting climate change
as consequence of human sins against nature with dire consequences for
humanity if it doesn’t change its ways (Rostock and Frentz 2009).
But whilst such mythic narratives may be adopted within environmen-
tal advocacy, as tools for potentially mobilising greater awareness of and
engagement with rationalist and scientific responses to disasters in the
risk society, in factual entertainment programmes they arguably engage
with other kinds of perceptual responses to disaster risks known to exist
(see Adams 2003). For instance, whilst they generally engage in more sec-
ularised and scientific interpretations of disaster events as involving natural
phenomena rather than angry deities, they retain that problematic notion
of a separation of Nature as an entity distinct from humanity (Lakoff
2010), constructed as the primary agent in weather and disasters and
180 V. CAMPBELL
which humans are passively subject to akin to disaster movies (Kakoudaki

2002; Salvador and Norton 2011). Nature is given a kind of judgemental
agency in these programmes, evident in titles such as Nature’s Fury, Savage
Planet, Raging Planet and so on. In positioning humanity with a capacity
to understand and anticipate the consequences of disaster through expert
commentary but predominantly without agency to sufficiently prepare
for or mitigate impending disasters, and concentrating instead on survival
experiences and responses, these programmes offer not so much a rational-
ist as a fatalistic response, another long-standing response to disaster risk
(Adams 2003; Boia 2005). This perspective takes disasters and ‘combines
such events, exaggerates them and invests them with a higher meaning:
the belief, in some way elementary, that everything must one day collapse’
(Boia 2005: 136). Fatalistic attempts to comprehend and accommodate
disasters, as the will of the Gods or of Nature, reflect a human capacity ‘to
integrate disasters into the natural order of things’ (Boia 2005: 124). This
offers a possible way of understanding the marginalisation or omission of
risk in these programmes in favour of images of impacts as attempting to
accommodate extreme weather and disaster risks in the absence of means,
scientific or otherwise, of ensuring absolute preparedness for or prediction
and mitigation of such risks. Fatalistic narratives around disasters argu-
ably reflect a response to the uncertainty of what some call ‘“virtual risks”
that scientific experts contend are there but are imperceptible in normal,
everyday experience (Ericson and Doyle 2004: 13). Disaster myth narra-
tives routinely invoke notions of transition, cleansing and purifying the
world of the ills of society though destruction is rarely total; there are
survivors, like Noah in the Biblical Flood, in effect being ‘rewarded’ with
opportunities to start again in the ruins of previous societies, hopefully
with lessons learned. The concentration on survivors, eyewitnesses and the
avoidance of images of the dead in factual entertainment programmes thus
might also be seen within this fatalistic, mythical framework. In countering
the imminence and inevitability of disasters offered by these programmes,
the possibility, even probability, of survival is more often than not either
implicitly or explicitly incorporated into their narratives. Programmes like
Super Comet: After the Impact and After Armageddon signal this in their
titles as well as in closing sequences depicting small groups of survivors
huddling together and forging new societies. Even in Life After People and
Aftermath: Population Zero, where humanity disappears entirely never to
return, here the presence of scientists explaining the processes of decay of
humanity’s built environment offers a parallel to the common paradox of
many disaster myth narratives: Who writes the disaster story if the world
has been brought to an end? The dislocation-of-scientist sequences men-
tioned earlier in the chapter here serve as a distancing narrative framework,
allowing for subjunctive scenes of mass destruction to invoke vicarious
pleasure at the spectacle of disaster, rather than fear, alarm or calls to advo-
cacy for that matter (Wheatley 2011).
Factual entertainment programmes on extreme weather and natural
disasters thus enable audiences to witness disasters at a safe distance, offer-
ing the visceral thrills of sequences of mass destruction, combined with the
reassuring accounts of survivors and authoritative, explanatory framing by
scientists. In doing this, factual entertainment programmes are not, how-
ever, offering a new and debased set of representations of disaster; rather
they are corresponding consciously or otherwise to an established and
culturally embedded aesthetic tradition of the Burkean dynamic sublime
focused on experience, as invoked in other forms of documentary and factual
entertainment discussed in previous chapters. In terms of extreme weather
and natural disasters, this can be aligned with long-standing attempts to
accommodate weather and disasters in the cultural imagination, just as past
cultures have done through fiction, art and myth (Boia 2005), in particular
in relation to the aesthetic tradition known as the apocalyptic sublime (Daly
2011; Gunn and Beard 2000). Weather porn fits into a chronology of
aesthetic fascination with extreme weather and disasters, linking modern-
day subjunctive documentaries with the apocalyptic sublime art of John
Martin, for example, and cultural trends like the nineteenth-century popu-
lar fascination with volcanoes and the more recent popular fascination with
disaster movies. Again, consideration of how the earth and atmospheric
sciences are depicted in factual entertainment and documentary television
requires more than a focus solely on normative critiques of the techniques
of subjunctive documentary and factual entertainment. Arguably, wider
responses to weather and disasters in popular culture and belief reveal com-
plex attitudes reflective of both subjunctive responses (whether wished-for
cleansing of sins or the rewards of survival from the judgement of God or
Nature) and sublime responses (the tension between the terror and awe
of the disaster event) that factual entertainment programmes also contain.
In some weather porn programmes the science of weather and disasters
is arguably significantly compromised by these frameworks of belief and
affect, focused on impacts and experiences rather than agency and risk for
instance, though some kind of relationship to scientific truth-claims remain.
The final chapter explores a range of programmes where the relationship
182 V. CAMPBELL
between science and popular beliefs are fully inverted, with the trappings of
science used to try and validate popular beliefs in what should be regarded
as true subjunctive documentaries.
REFERENCES
Adams, J. (2003). Risk and morality: Three framing devices. In R. V. Ericson &
A. Doyle (Eds.), Risk and morality. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Agnew, V. (2004). Introduction: What is reenactment? Criticism, 46(3), 327–339.
Associated Press (AP). (2014, December 12). Weather porn? Network newscasts
spending more time on dramatic weather. Fox News. http://www.foxnews.
com/entertainment/2014/12/12/weather-porn-network-newscasts-
spending-more-time-on-dramatic-weather/. Accessed 8 Apr 2015.
Bakir, V. (2010). Media and risk: Old and new research directions. Journal of Risk
Research, 13(1), 5–18.
Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage.
Boddy, W. (2000). Weather porn and the battle for eyeballs: Promoting digital
television in the USA and UK. In J. Fullerton & A. Söderbergh Widding
(Eds.), Moving images: From Edison to the webcam. London: John Libbey.
Boia, L. (2005). The weather in the imagination. London: Reaktion Books.
Buell, F. (2010). A short history of environmental apocalypse. In S. Skrimshire
(Ed.), Future ethics: Climate change and apocalyptic imagination. London:
Continuum.
Button, G. V. (2002). Popular media reframing of man-made disasters: A caution-
ary tale. In S. M. Hoffman & A. Oliver-Smith (Eds.), Catastrophe & culture:
The anthropology of disaster. Santa Fe: SAR Press.
Campbell, V. (2014). Analysing impossible pictures: Computer generated imagery
in science documentary and factual entertainment television. In D. Machin
Clarke, L. (2006). Worst cases: Terror and catastrophe in the popular imagination.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cook, A. (2004). The use and abuse of historical reenactment: Thoughts on
recent trends in public history. Criticism, 46(3), 487–496.
Cottle, S. (1998). Ulrich Beck, “risk society” and the media: A catastrophic view?
European Journal of Communication, 13(1), 5–32.
Daly, N. (2011). The volcanic disaster narrative: From pleasure garden to canvas,
page, and stage. Victorian Studies, 53(2), 255–285.
Doyle, J. (2009, August 19). No job and fourteen mouths to feed, but in our
culture. Still a star. The Globe and Mail, p. R3.
Draper, R. (2013, November). Last days of a storm chaser. National Geographic.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/biggest-storm/draper-text.
Accessed 11 Apr 2015.
Ericson, R., & Doyle, A. (Eds.). (2004). Uncertain business: Risk, insurance and
the limits of knowledge. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Gorelangton, R. (2002, October 3). TV Express. The Daily Express, p. 53.
Gorman, B. (2009, January 8). Reality TV. The Sudbury Star, p. D4.
Gunn, J., & Beard, D. E. (2000). On the apocalyptic sublime. Southern Com-
munication Journal, 65(4), 269–286.
Hughes, H. (2014). Green documentary: Environmental documentary in the 21st
century. Bristol: Intellect.
James, M. (2009, May 31). Pick of the day. The Sunday Times, p. 60.
Jones, S. (2012). The lexicon of offence: The meanings of torture, porn, and “tor-
ture porn”. In F. Atwood, V. Campbell, I. Q. Hunter, & S. Lockyer (Eds.),
Controversial images. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kakoudaki, D. (2002). Spectacles of history: Race relations, melodrama, and the
science fiction/disaster film. Camera Obscura, 17(2), 108–153.
Keane, S. (2006). Disaster movies: The cinema of catastrophe. London: Wallflower
Press.
Kitzinger, J. (1999). Researching risk and the media. Health, Risk and Society,
1(1), 55–69.
Lakoff, G. (2010). Why it matters how we frame the environment. Environmental
León, B. (1999). Science on television: The narrative of science documentary. Luton:
The Pantaneto Press.
Lester, L., & Cottle, S. (2009). Visualizing climate change: Television news and
ecological citizenship. International Journal of Communication, 3, 920–936.
Marshall, J. & Picou, J. S. (2008). Postnormal science, precautionary principle and
worst cases: The challenge of twenty-first century catastrophes. Sociological
Inquiry, 7(2), 230–247.
McGuire, B. (2012). Waking the giant: How a changing climate triggers earth-
quakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Miles, B., & Morse, S. (2007). The role of news media in natural disaster risk and
recovery. Ecological Economics, 63, 365–373.
Pantti, M., Wahl-Jorgensen, K., & Cottle, S. (2012). Disasters and the media.
Oxford: Peter Lang.
Parton, H. D. (2015, February 26). ‘TV news’ “war porn” craze: Why Chris Hayes &
Laura Ingraham are united in fury. Salon. http://www.salon.com/2015/02/26/
tv_news_war_porn_craze_why_chris_hayes_laura_ingraham_are_united_in_fury/.
Accessed 8 Apr 2015.
Patterson, J. (2000, July 14). Screen: And the Oscar for best actor goes to the
weather! The Guardian, p. 6.
Perez-Lugo, M. (2004). Media uses in disaster situations: A new focus on the
impact phase. Sociological Inquiry, 74(2), 210–225.
Preston, J. (2007, April 22). Between desire and loathing. The Sunday Telegraph,
p. 25.
184 V. CAMPBELL
Raasch, C. (2012, November 13). For “preppers”, every day could be doomsday.
USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/12/
for-preppers-every-day-could-be-doomsday/1701151/. Accessed 22 Apr 2015.
Robins, J. (1998, August 18). Coming soon to a screen near you—Weather-porn;
digital television is poised to offer hundreds of new channels. But what will they
show? The Independent, p. 13.
Rosteck, T., & Frentz, T. S. (2009). Myth and multiple readings in environmental
rhetoric: The case of an inconvenient truth. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 95(1),
1–19.
Salvador, M., & Norton, T. (2011). The flood myth in the age of global climate
change. Environmental Communication, 5(1), 45–61.
Svensen, H. (2009). The end is nigh: A history of natural disasters. London:
Reaktion Books.
Tucker, N. (2008, March 8). Depopulation boom: How long would the world
turn without us? We’re dying to know. The Washington Post, p. C1.
Vasterman, P., Yzermans, C., & Dirkzwager, A. (2005). The role of the media and
media hypes in the aftermath of disasters. Epidemiologic Reviews, 27, 107–114.
Weik von Mossner, A. (2011). Reframing Katrina: The color of disaster in Spike
Lee’s When the Levees Broke. Environmental Communication, 5(2), 146–165.
Wheatley, H. (2011). Beautiful images in spectacular clarity: Spectacular televi-
sion, landscape programming and the question of (tele)visual pleasure. Screen,
5(2), 233–248.
Williams, S. (2008). Rethinking the nature of disaster: From failed instruments of
learning to a post-social understanding. Social Forces, 8(2), 1115–1138.
CHAPTER 7
Pseudoscience and Popular Beliefs
INTRODUCTION
In this book so far an attempt has been made to better explain, understand
and in some cases defend the trends in factual entertainment and television
documentary treatment of science as demonstrating the complex interac-
tions between representational traditions within specific science disciplines
and their representations in wider popular culture in specific combinations
with documentary traditions. Some of the criticisms of the shift from doc-
umentary to factual entertainment, towards spectacle and the subjunctive,
might be countered in such analyses by acknowledgement of the inherent
tensions in representing the impossible pictures of many sciences’ subjects.
Furthermore, this book has argued that the solutions offered by factual
entertainment programmes to those representational dilemmas often con-
form to both scientific and cultural narratives. Sometimes this occurs in
problematic ways that generate tension between those narrative forms,
but sometimes this occurs in complementary ways and more often than
critics necessarily acknowledge. As outlined in Chap. 1, one reason for
this maybe that the types of programmes and series considered so far sit
in a wider environment of ‘factual’ programming and ‘factual’ television
channels, nestling in schedules surrounded by programme formats and
contents that strain these tensions arguably to breaking point.
A key component of criticisms of the factual television landscape of
the last 10–20 years has been how it has increasingly shifted, and shifted
not only away from traditional documentary modes towards more hybrid

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-38538-3_7
186 V. CAMPBELL
and factual entertainment modes but also away from traditional documen-
tary subjects towards less and less factual, and more and more contrived
subjects. In other words it is not just the shift towards docu-soaps over
traditional expository formats, for instance, though that has become a sig-
nificant feature of factual channels in recent years, but also a move away
from the scientific within the factual domain. In particular, with regard to
science factual programming a notable and much-lamented trend has been
for more and more of science/factual channels’ output to consist of what
could be called pseudoscientific programmes moving far beyond even ten-
uous links to scientific theories, processes and practices. Concerns about
the rise of these types of programmes have been around for some time
(see Dawkins 1998 for instance). The appearance, indeed proliferation, of
programmes such as Ancient Aliens (2009–), Finding Bigfoot (2011–) and
Ghost Hunters (2004–) on otherwise factual channels, and sometimes even
on science channels might seem to undermine and set back the long-held
notions of the capacity of the media as vehicles for the dissemination of
scientific knowledge to the wider public. The impact of programmes with
those conventional goals may be compromised when they are surrounded in
the schedules by programmes presentating popular beliefs and pseudoscience
in the guise of ‘factual’ programming.
The purpose of this final chapter is to explore these other kinds of fac-
tual entertainment programmes that are both proliferating and in many
cases contextualising the science programmes discussed so far. Applying
the same approach as used in previous chapters, particular attention is paid
to how the techniques of documentary intersect with pseudoscientific tech-
niques and beliefs, especially in attempts to balance the claims to the real of
both, in the context of beliefs and practices that, to conventional science
at least, are illegitimate claims to the real. In this sense this chapter breaks
somewhat from the previous chapters, which have collectively argued that
factual entertainment programmes on a variety of sciences certainly display
attributes of subjunctive documentaries, particularly in their representa-
tion of impossible pictures such as sub-atomic particles, extinct animals,
lost civilisations, mega-storms and galactic superclusters. This book asserts
that these practices do not necessarily weaken such programmes’ claims to
the real and to the scientific. In the different ways the techniques of factual
entertainment, documentary and traditions of scientific representations
interact in particular scientific fields, it is possible to see beyond a simplistic
notion of the role of science documentary as a routine dissemination of the
latest scientific consensual knowledge. Instead, many of these programmes
PSEUDOSCIENCE AND POPULAR BELIEFS 187
demonstrate the boundaries between scientific knowledge and scientific

theory, highlighting the intrinsic role that aesthetic imagination plays in
many sciences concerned with phenomena difficult or impossible to wit-
ness or visualise directly. Furthermore, it is possible to argue that the com-
binations of representational choices made in such programmes, drawing
on science, documentary and wider popular culture, result in impossible
pictures that frame the sciences, not as vehicles of dissemination of scien-
tific knowledge or processes per se, but as vehicles for the invocation of
awe and wonder in science—as vehicles for the representation of science
as sublime. Whether through the dynamic and apocalyptic sublimes of
weather and disaster programmes, for instance, or the technological sub-
limes of space probes and particle colliders in space science programmes
and scanning technologies in archaeology programmes, previous chapters
have argued that the shortcomings of many of these programmes, in terms
of their regular elision of scientific processes behind the imagery on display
as well as of the areas of geopolitical contention and controversy (such as
climate change or the space race), may be offset at least to some extent by
their constructing science as sublime. Like the explicit acknowledgements
by Brian Cox and Neil DeGrasse Tyson in their respective series of the
influence of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos on their interests in cosmology and sub-
sequent career paths, it may be that amongst the programmes considered
here the sublime imagery of sciences may speak to audiences in a man-
ner other than the imparting of knowledge. Unquestionably, at times the
imperatives of entertainment and the spectacle of CGI somewhat override
commitments to remain within the boundaries of scientific knowledge and
the characteristics of CGI itself as a form of the sublime, suggested in this
book to be a subjunctive sublime, feed into the visual and narrative con-
structions on show. Not every programme can or does achieve the status
of a Cosmos or a Life on Earth and some fall well short of this, warrant-
ing the scorn of scientists in their inaccuracies and stretching of dramatic
licence. Nonetheless, it is clear that many programmes at least attempt
to ground their representations within the predominant representational
practices and boundaries of knowledge that apply to different sciences,
whether it is in how space science programmes are comparatively circum-
spect in their depictions of alien life, for example, or how many extinct
animal programmes are at pains to validate their reconstructions within
palaeontological knowledge. This book’s discussion has certainly demon-
strated that simplistic notions about the role and use of factual entertain-
ment techniques, particularly but not exclusively CGI, as undermining
188 V. CAMPBELL
the science communication project is lacking in terms of understanding

the complex relationships between representational traditions within and
between sciences, within documentary in relation to different subject areas
and within wider cultural frameworks of understanding of the topics and
objects of science.
By way of reinforcing this overarching position present in this book,
then, this final chapter explores a range of programmes that arguably far
more clearly demonstrate the concerns of critics of factual entertainment,
of popular science communication and of the tensions between scientific
knowledge and popular belief. As a point of contrast to the types of pro-
grammes considered in previous chapters, this chapter is concerned with
programmes distinct from the others in two key regards. First, the chapter
is concerned with those dealing with topics that are regarded by conven-
tional, mainstream science as pseudoscientific. Most notable, and the cen-
tre of focus here, are programmes focused around three distinct yet related
subjects: ufology—the study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and
associated phenomena believed to be visiting intelligent alien civilisations;
cryptozoology—the study of animals (‘cryptids’) from myth and popular
folklore such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster; and parapsychol-
ogy—the study of paranormal phenomena, most prominently in terms of
television programmes on the study of ghosts and hauntings. The framing
of these subjects as pseudosciences is potentially in itself controversial and
will be discussed in this chapter before the programmes on these subjects
are analysed.
Second, many of these programmes are categorised by the broadcast-
ing industry and regulators as in the entertainment rather than the factual
genre. Disclaimers at the beginning of many of these programmes make
declarations like ‘this programme is for entertainment purposes only’, and
these disclaimers have become common not least because of several con-
troversies over the veracity of some of their claims over the years (Koven
2007; Hill 2011). Yet, not only do these programmes usually originate
and appear in syndication on factual television channels, but as this chap-
ter shows they also systematically adopt the narrative structures and visual
tropes of documentaries and other factual entertainment programmes. It
is worth noting too that these programmes have become ever more preva-
lent since the laments of the rise of pseudoscience in documentary made
by Dawkins in the 1990s (see also Campbell 2000). Particularly with
regard to programmes on ghosts and hauntings there is now a plethora of
programmes dealing with this subject area, across a wide array of channels
and producers, and whilst critical attention has been paid to the popularity
of the paranormal in literature and screen fiction (Ruffles 2004; Kovacs
2006; McGuire and Buchbinder 2010; Steward and Zborowski 2014) and
audiences’ interactions with paranormal media (Hill 2011; Brewer 2012),
the programmes themselves have had little critical scrutiny as of the time
of writing (an exception being Koven 2007). Previous work has shown
how the topics of the pseudosciences create fundamental problems for
documentary claims to the real through explicit and implicit challenges
to the cornerstones of documentary techniques in three distinct regards:
First, paranormal documentaries overtly acknowledge the limitations of

visual evidence by stating that the camera can and does lie. Second, the
limitations of eyewitness testimony are exposed by acknowledgement that
people can and do misinterpret, and mis-remember events. Finally, expert
testimony complicates rather than clarifies these programmes, with different
disciplines evaluating evidence in very different ways, often without resolu-
tion between opinions. (Campbell 2000: 155)
Since that work was conducted the evolution of pseudoscience factual

entertainment programmes has continued, with the incorporation of a
number of features from other categories of factual entertainment pro-
grammes as well as other fictional genres, resulting in a very distinctive
pattern of narrative and visual construction of the pseudosciences and
their associated popular beliefs. This chapter argues that these emerging
patterns position these programmes as the real sites of problematic sub-
junctive documentary as a result of their appropriation of the ‘trappings
of science’ (Brewer 2012) and ‘scientific rhetoric’ (Cross 2004) in com-
bination with appropriations of the trappings and techniques of docu-
mentary. The substantive challenges to the claims to the real of both
science and documentary come from these programmes, whose status as
even factual entertainment is open to question. Threats to the accuracy
and legitimacy of the dissemination of science through factual television,
therefore, come not from the kinds of science programmes discussed so
far in this book, which draw on new techniques for the visual represen-
tation of scientific ideas, but from programmes that use the ‘trappings’
of science and documentary to indulge popular but pseudoscientific
beliefs. Even with ‘entertainment only’ disclaimers, the scheduling of
such programmes on factual channels, around factual programmes, with
almost inevitable influence on some of those programmes as well, which
190 V. CAMPBELL
this chapter shows, represent far bigger challenges to the future rep-
resentation of science in factual television. Given the persistence and
widespread level of belief in pseudo-scientific claims, some studies sug-
gesting that around three-quarters of people have at least one belief out-
side of the scientific mainstream for instance (Richman and Bell 2012;
Goode 2013), it is not surprising perhaps that such beliefs are finding
widespread representation in factual entertainment programming. That
is not to suggest that the prevalence of pseudoscientific programming
represents some kind of simplistic causal influence on the extent of
pseudoscientific beliefs amongst the wider population. Although some
work does proceed with a concern about influence (e.g. Brewer 2012)
this reflects a rather simplistic notion of audience reception of both sci-
entific and non-scientific claims in the media that persists in some sci-
ence communication research despite the rise of active audience studies
showing them to be more interrogative of media messages than some
scholars assume (Campbell 2006). In the specific case of paranormal
programmes, researchers have shown how audiences seem to engage in
ongoing negotiations between belief and scepticism when watching such
programmes (Hill 2011), essentially in a state of persistent ‘ambivalence’
towards what they witness (Koven 2007: 187). The concern here then
is not really about the influence on audiences of such programmes, and
a resultant proliferation of pseudoscientific beliefs, but rather a concern
about factual entertainment and documentary form. Where pseudosci-
entific programmes use the techniques of modern factual entertainment
programmes and traditional documentary to present such beliefs, they
offer a significant challenge to those concerned about the role of the
media in science communication and their normative ideas about what
are acceptable techniques for the communication of science in televi-
sion documentary. The challenge for those wanting to make serious,
scientifically valid documentaries is how to generate audience interest,
engagement and of course ultimately ratings to ensure the continued
production and hoped-for dissemination and reception of high-quality
television science, in this context of entertainment-oriented programmes
centred on popular beliefs. Take, for example, the comment of one par-
ticipant in Hill’s study of the audience for Most Haunted (2002–), a very
successful and popular British ghost-hunting programme. The partici-
pant’s view was [sic] ‘it’s not exactly reality TV, or documentary, I think
documentary probably would be closest but documentary really doesn’t
entertain us, Most Haunted does really’ (in Hill 2011: 69). The ways in
which pseudoscientific programmes intersect with documentary and sci-

ence are thus important to incorporate into analysis of the relationship
between science and contemporary factual entertainment television.
PSEUDOSCIENCE AND POPULAR BELIEFS

Rather like the concept of the sublime having become a complex philosoph-
ical question beyond its particular aesthetic applications, the idea of some
kind of clear and simple distinction between ‘science’ and ‘pseudoscience’
has become a particular strand of complex discussion and debate within
the philosophy of science, known as the demarcation problem (for discus-
sions of this see Pigliucci and Boudry 2013; Hansson 2015; and Philips
2008). Early attempts to try and demarcate science from pseudoscience
depend upon assertions being made about the nature of the ‘scientific
method’, a claimed set of exact procedures used in ‘proper’ science which
is still largely used as a heuristic both within scientific practice and science
communication. Tyson offers an informal version of this in the opening
episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014): ‘Test ideas by experiment
and observation. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject those that
fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything.’
Amongst the problems with this superficially compelling idea are the
ways in which it doesn’t really reflect either the fully rounded nature of
scientific practice over time, or for that matter variations between par-
ticular sciences in their applications of such principles, and indeed areas
outside of the natural sciences, such as the humanities where some of
their methodological practices are more reliable and robust than some of
the procedures and claims of science. Following Kuhn’s (1996) seminal
work on the underlying structures of scientific development, a number
of scholars have pointed to the degree to which scientific development is
significantly shaped by socio-cultural and politico-economic factors. What
constitutes scientific knowledge is just as socially situated as any other
kind of knowledge, evidenced in moments of uncertainty, when obser-
vational, experimental or theoretical challenges to established paradigms
threaten established orders of thinking. A common feature of the his-
tory of science, for instance, is how new or contrarian ideas are treated
as heretical at worst or as ‘deviant’ science at best (Dolby 1979; Goode
2013). The heliocentric model of the solar system, continental drift or
the asteroid-impact theory of the death of the dinosaurs are all examples
of ideas that are now mainstream orthodoxy but were highly problematic
192 V. CAMPBELL
when first advanced—and problematic within scientific disciplines too.

Ideas like these, and the people who came up with them, are often later
reconstructed by science as exemplars of the power of scientific ideas to
endure and the genius of scientists, an approach often taken by science
documentaries including Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. More nuanced his-
torical analyses, however, point to greater complexities in the geopolitical
evolution of scientific knowledge (Fara 2009). Moreover, the extent to
which functioning science is methodologically heterogeneous (Hansson
2015), and often depends upon degrees of theoretical speculation and
ideas beyond immediate means of observation or experiment, also makes
the notion of a demarcation between science and pseudoscience difficult.
A lot of theoretical physics, for instance, is far more speculative than much
of the observationally and empirically based work in the social sciences
(Philips 2008). Similarly, definitions of pseudoscience are equally varied in
the range and weighting of criteria for what constitutes a pseudoscience
(Holt et al. 2012). Instead then of a clear boundary between the scientific
and the pseudoscientific, it is perhaps better to talk of a continuum:
With well-established science (e.g. the idea that matter is composed of atoms)
at one end, passing via cutting-edge science (e.g. neutrino oscillations) and
mainstream but speculative science (e.g. string theory)—and then, much
further along the way, through shoddy science (N rays, cold fusion)—and
ending, after a long further journey, at pseudoscience. (Sokal 2006: 289)
In the sciences discussed so far in this book, there is clear evidence of this
continuum in the differing weights given to the nature of visual represen-
tations of the subjects under discussion. Graphic verité representations of a
Black Hole, a living Tyrannosaurus rex, Stonehenge at its peak or a hypo-
thetically possible F6 tornado each reflect different relationships to the
sciences associated with such images, and different kinds of evidence con-
structed within those disciplines as reliable, credible and ‘scientific’. These
sciences do not share exactly the same conceptual and methodological
principles and processes, though arguably they all sit in broadly the same
place along the continuum at the end of the well-established sciences.
For something to be situated at the other end of the continuum,
on the pseudoscientific end, it needs to exhibit to a significant degree
characteristics contrary to the principles, practices and processes of well-
established sciences, whilst at the same time making claims to be scientific
(Hansson 2013, 2015; Sokal 2006), as well as drawing on the rhetoric
(Cross 2004) and trappings of science (Brewer 2012). Sokal’s (2006)

definition of pseudoscience is helpful in differentiating the ends of the
continuum. For Sokal, pseudoscience:
1. Makes assertions about real or alleged phenomena and/or real or alleged

causal relations that mainstream science justifiably considers to be utterly
implausible; and 2. attempts to support these assertions through types of
argumentation or evidence that fall far short of the logical and evidentiary
standards of mainstream science. (2006: 288)
Labelling an area of investigation or belief as pseudoscientific is inherently

pejorative but that normative dimension usually relates to judgements of
the validity, veracity and quality of the claims made and the evidence offered
to support them. Many of the most persistently labelled pseudosciences
in this sense are those practices where claims would require fundamental
rethinking of extremely well-established scientific knowledge (established
through observation, testing, experiment, etc.); where claims have been sys-
tematically tested and found to be unrepeatable, evidentially weak or indeed
evidentially false; or which demonstrate fundamental flaws in conceptual
coherence and basic reasoning. Numerous books have been written aimed
at highlighting and explaining the problems that underpin many pseudosci-
entific beliefs (e.g. Gilovich 1991; Shermer 1997; Philips 2008; Wiseman
2011). Each of the areas considered in this chapter, ufology, cryptozoology
and parapsychology, features regularly in discussions and critiques of the
pseudosciences in terms of how they display the characteristics identified
by Sokal, though they too arguably sit on that continuum in slightly differ-
ent places, intersecting with mainstream science in different ways. They all
sit towards the pseudoscientific end, as they inherently contain significant
problems regarding their claims, evidence and reasoning, and are routinely
positioned as pseudoscientific by the mainstream sciences with which they
are nominally associated. Parapsychology is arguably the closest to main-
stream science of the three and certainly with regard to some of its proce-
dures and practices. When retained within the disciplinary boundaries of
conventional psychology, it is the most defensible, yet remains for many a
‘deviant discipline’ (Goode 2013: 162). Even its defenders acknowledge
that some of its intrinsic claims, such as ‘admitting elusive immaterial enti-
ties, such as disembodied minds’ (Holt et al. 2012: 88) are, at present,
more pseudoscientific than scientific. That academic texts on parapsychol-
ogy need to devote space to discuss the pseudoscience question is indica-
194 V. CAMPBELL
tive of its still uncertain status as science (as evidenced by the discussion in
Holt et al. 2012). Parapsychology is arguably most scientific with regard to
lab-based experimental investigations into psychokinesis and extra-sensory
perception (Holt et al. 2012: 85). The extent to which factual entertain-
ment programmes draw on the more (or less) scientific features of these
areas of investigation is a core concern of this chapter, in the ways in which
they may contribute to, or in fact undermine, the claims of these areas of
investigation to the scientific.
THE TRAPPINGS AND RHETORIC OF SCIENCE

Recognising that claims to the scientific are not subject to absolutist crite-
ria of science and pseudoscience but rather to a continuum of credibility
parallels claims to the real in documentary and factual entertainment exist-
ing on a continuum of the veracity of techniques used to establish those
claims. Moreover it is a reminder that ‘scientific authority is a social con-
struction, and that the mass media help construct such authority’ (Brewer
2012: 315 emphasis added). The media, along with practices within the
pseudosciences themselves, show:
That cultural packaging—a sort of once-removed indication of scientific

authority—can be key in creating knowledge accepted as scientific. This
adds a new dimension to the argument that scientific legitimacy is con-
structed, not just from scientific methodologies and institutional location,
but also of language, culture, rhetoric and symbols. (Cross 2004: 29)
Cross’ study of ufology for instance, looking at publications, methodol-

ogy, organisations and events, showed how it ‘draws on at least three key
features of science: It uses what adherents insist are empirical methods; it
espouses a body of knowledge its practitioners have labelled scientific; and
it is carried out in a network of researchers that is modelled after a scien-
tific speciality’ (Cross 2004: 9). Cross asserts that the ‘success of ufology
implies that the culture of science—if only the aroma of its conventional
form—is something that can be exported, twisted, and fitted to lend cred-
ibility to even the most unlikely claims to truth’ (Cross 2004: 4). Success
in the sense of achieving popular appeal, widespread dissemination of ideas
and the establishment and maintenance of organisations and careers as
‘ufologists’, rather than in terms of acceptance by mainstream science,
has come through ‘taking the symbolic frame of science and replacing the
content with its own set of completely different facts and theories’ and, as
such, ‘ufology effectively re-appropriates the cultural meaning of science to
support its own endeavours’ (Cross 2004: 3 emphasis added).
Cross is signalling the importance of the cultural meanings of science
as a construction, sitting within wider cultural frameworks, which in turn
is an indication that scientific ‘rhetoric is extremely flexible, in fact far
more so than is usually acknowledged in discussions of science as a form
of authority’ (Cross 2004: 4). The construction of scientific authority
within science documentary and factual entertainment has been discussed
throughout this book, and often depends upon the visual construction of
a subject with what Brewer calls the ‘trappings of science’ (2012). This is
done, for instance, through signalling scientists’ status through imagery of
them in book-lined offices, equipment-filled laboratories, using scientific
terminology, writing equations on blackboards and working with tech-
nologies (Brewer 2012: 316). Recalling the concerns of Metz (2008) dis-
cussed in Chap. 3, about the absence of such imagery in programmes like
Alien Worlds as somehow indicative of a non-scientific and subjunctive
documentary treatment of science, arguably reflects how ingrained these
trappings of science have become, that any deviations from these norms
can be seen as somehow a deviation from science rather than what is actu-
ally a particular set of representational tropes that have come to frame
‘science’ on screen. The important point here, echoing Cross (2004), is
that ‘media messages invoking the trappings of science can construct sci-
entific authority even for pursuits regarded by mainstream science as pseu-
doscientific’ (Brewer 2012: 324). The extent to which factual television
programmes on pseudoscientific subjects reproduce the trappings of sci-
ence as opposed to the trappings of popular belief are a key dimension on
which to evaluate such programmes. Attempts to construct investigators
as systematic and drawing on processes, technologies and terminologies
proximate to those of mainstream science, for instance, or including rebut-
tals of pseudoscientific claims from mainstream scientists would indicate
clear efforts to appropriate the trappings of science in this sense. Efforts to
emphasise things such as openness to alternative methodologies and sys-
tems of knowledge eschewing notions of investigative processes and prin-
ciples, foregrounding investigators’ personal investment in what they’re
researching based on prior personal, anecdotal experiences and treating
eyewitnesses uncritically, on the other hand, would suggest a framework
more within popular belief and the pseudoscientific. Rejection of conven-
tional investigative processes and an over-reliance on anecdotal testimony
196 V. CAMPBELL
are two generally recognised problems of pseudoscience (Goode 2013;

Brewer 2012; Holt et al. 2012; Cross 2004).
Of course personal testimony, especially when captured through some
form of interview, is also a very common practice within a variety of sci-
ences as well as a central technique of documentary methodology (Nichols
2010: 189), so it is not so much the presence or absence of particular
visual or narrative tropes on their own that signals either a scientific or
pseudoscientific approach, or for that matter a more documentary or
entertainment-oriented approach, but rather how combinations of tropes
appear to situate the position of a programme with regard to the claims
within it. For example, how a programme treats the veracity or other-
wise of an eyewitness account can be signalled in a number of different
ways outside of the inclusion of interview material with the eyewitness
themselves. An eyewitness account might be contextualised by counter-
arguments from other interviewees, or by critical commentary by a pre-
senter or narrator, or through ‘subversive juxtaposition’ (Corner 1996:
29–30) with images that challenge or contradict the eyewitness testimony.
In an earlier study of pseudoscience documentaries, the signalling of the
questionable status of eyewitnesses who claimed to have been abducted
by aliens was done in one programme through the captioning of them
as ‘abductees’, whilst experts’ captions were without inverted commas
(Campbell 2000: 151). That programme, Contact (1994), came in the
BBC’s primary theological documentary strand of the time, Everyman,
and its treatment of the subject of alien abduction was notably different
in tone to an earlier BBC programme on the same subject that appeared
in the science documentary strand Horizon (‘Close Encounters’ 1994).
Whilst the treatment of claimed abductees was equivocal across both
programmes, the claims of ‘experts’ in alien abduction were subjected
to greater critical challenge in the Horizon programme (Campbell 2000:
152), and the overall tone was more circumspect and ambivalent, sug-
gesting the science strand required a different narrative framework and
tone to accommodate the subject matter. A critical and sceptical position
regarding eyewitnesses is not the sole preserve of a scientific approach, of
course, but the degree to which witness testimony in documentaries and
factual entertainment programmes is subjected to challenge, particularly
when it concerns pseudoscientific claims, can be seen as indicative of a
programme’s apparent position regarding those claims.
It is in these senses that the factual entertainment programmes on
pseudoscientific topics discussed in this chapter can be categorised as true
subjunctive documentaries. In a number of different ways the trappings of

science as well as the techniques of documentary and tropes from popular
culture are used by these programmes largely without the ambivalent and
sometimes self-contradictory approaches to pseudoscience evident in tele-
vision documentaries of the 1990s (Campbell 2000). Instead, the factual
entertainment programmes of the twenty-first century treat pseudoscien-
tific subjects not as claims to be fundamentally contested, but rather more
like adventures where ‘questions of actual belief or nonbelief are largely
irrelevant during the drama and excitement of the trip’ (Ellis in Koven
2007: 200).
ENCOUNTERS OF THE SUBJUNCTIVE KIND

To get an initial sense of the concerns here, it is worth beginning the
analysis of such programmes by discussing one of the most overt examples
of the kinds of programme under consideration that contrasts with pro-
grammes discussed in other chapters—the History Channel’s popular yet
highly controversial series Ancient Aliens. Unlike the actually quite care-
ful, bounded and qualified consideration of the existence of alien life seen
in the space science programmes discussed in Chap. 3, Ancient Aliens fully
embraces the idea of intelligent alien life, UFOs being extra-terrestrial
spacecraft and alien civilisations visiting Earth both before and throughout
human history. Where it stands out from more conventional ufology series
like Hanger 1: UFO Files (2014–) is that it combines what might be called
conventional ufology—focused mostly on post–World War II UFO cases
of eyewitness, visual and other evidence (as in government files)—with
ancient astronaut theory. Associated with figures like Erich von Däniken,
who features in the series, the theory posits that many ancient monu-
ments, like the pyramids or the Nazca Lines, have alien rather than human
origins (in whole or in part), and it is a theory on the very extreme of
the continuum of credibility in counter-narrative archaeological and his-
torical programmes discussed in Chap. 5. Ancient Aliens is entirely pre-
mised on alien involvement in essentially any and every aspect of history,
from claiming aliens may have wiped out the dinosaurs to make way for
humans, to aliens being behind religious mythologies (Gods are aliens)
and ancient civilisations, right up to claims of alien involvement in mod-
ern historical events such as World War II. The format of the programme
uses a voice-of-god narration which is persistently qualified in its descrip-
tion of theories using phrases like ‘could it be’ and ‘is it possible that’
198 V. CAMPBELL
to frame the claims of alien involvement in human history. A variety of

imagery is used to accompany claims, often conventional footage of loca-
tions, monuments, artworks and photographs of the eras, people and
places being linked to aliens. This is interspersed with a variety of talking
head sequences with ‘experts’. Occasionally these are experts in religion
or folkloric studies, but more often than not they are ufologists and other
kinds of non-conventional historians and analysts. The breakout star of
the series is Giorgio Tsoukalos, editor of Legendary Times magazine and
director of von Däniken’s Centre for Ancient Astronaut Research, who
has been given his own show with a similar theme entitled In Search of
Aliens (2014–). The scientific and archaeological communities’ response
to this show in particular, and to ancient alien theories around for some
time, is outright rejection and hostility as these are theories that can and
have been roundly demolished by professional archaeologists (for a dis-
cussion see Fagan 2006). The initial series’ pilot, ‘Chariots, Gods and
Beyond’, first broadcast in 2009, for example, was centred on the work
of von Däniken, and included one of his famous claims that the Nazca
Lines in Peru may be images designed to be seen by UFOs and/or used
by them as landing strips, even levelling off mountains to make runways.
Every part of this narrative around the Nazca Lines can be countered by
conventional archaeological evidence. The glyphs and ‘runways’ are pro-
cessional walkways, part of ritual practices associated with the Gods, who
take the form of various animals and/or mountains and certain sources
of water, so vital in an arid region. This is known from comparisons with
contemporaneous and geographically proximate cultural practices and
beliefs, as well as from physical evidence like pottery, found in nearby
settlements and on the processional routes themselves, and features of
the construction of the glyphs. Apart from the briefest of mentions and a
few other counter-arguments from a science fiction writer, the pilot pro-
gramme gives these alternative explanations barely any space at all. In the
series proper, even the relatively brief and weak rebuttal scenes disappear,
such that at no point are possible alternative explanations for the phe-
nomena being claimed to be caused by aliens presented. No accredited
historians, archaeologists or other scientists are shown to present chal-
lenges or rebuttals to the claims being made. To give a specific example,
in the episode ‘Aliens and Cover-ups’ the central narrative thrust is that a
series of events in the historical past indicate possible government and reli-
gious authority cover-ups of alien life. One case cited is that of Giordano
Bruno, with the claim being that Bruno was burnt at the stake for being
a heretic not just because of his theory of an infinite number of inhabited

worlds (a theory discussed in the opening episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime
Odyssey) but because he had had actual contact with alien civilisations that
the Catholic Church wanted to suppress. The evidence for this claim was
that this contact is possibly in books written by Bruno, either destroyed
by the Church or held in the secretive Vatican library. The approach of the
series as a whole follows this structure of taking historical events, people
and locations and spinning out an uncontested narrative of alien origins/
influence. Such a persistent and deliberate ‘neglect of historical and liter-
ary scholarship’ (Hansson 2013: 65) positions the ancient alien theories
presented by this series as pseudoarchaeology as well as pseudoscience in
the broader sense. Considering the kinds of critiques that both space sci-
ence and archaeology programmes have received in terms of their use of
techniques like CGI and dramatised reenactments (as discussed in Chaps.
3 and 5, respectively), it is interesting that Ancient Aliens largely eschews
those kinds of techniques in favour of far more conventional talking head
and archive footage montages and yet offers what is arguably a profoundly
more subjunctive documentary account of a supposed alien-determined
human history. Subjunctive documentary, then, should be seen as refer-
ring to programmes that use both the traditional tools of documentary
and those associated with factual entertainment like CGI to attempt to
construct pseudoscience into a coherent, plausible and authoritative narra-
tive. Rather than critiquing subjunctive documentaries as those which use
these techniques to show the impossible pictures of objects of scientific
investigation (like living dinosaurs and sub-atomic particles), attention
should centre on their use to construct pictures of the impossible objects
of the pseudosciences (like ghosts and ancient aliens).
Another group of programmes on pseudoscientific topics also treats its
subjects as intrinsically real and true, but takes a different approach, centring
its narratives on representing and reconstructing the accounts of eyewit-
nesses without challenge, question or critical scrutiny. These are particularly
popular in relation to accounts of seeing ghosts, with a number of chan-
nels having their own ghost story series. Examples include My Ghost Story
(2010–), Paranormal Witness (2011–), and When Ghosts Attack (2013–)
as well as Close Encounters (2014–) which does much the same thing, but
for UFO and alien contact experiences, using dramatic reconstructions
with CGI to reproduce spaceships instead of ghosts. Essentially these are
all anthology programmes, each episode featuring one or more accounts of
claimed experiences of ghosts, poltergeists and demons (or UFOs/aliens
200 V. CAMPBELL
in the case of Close Encounters) depicted in talking head sequences with

establishing shots of locations, as well as occasional pieces of amateur video,
photography and audio recordings, and dramatic reenactments of varying
degrees of production quality. On occasion references to psychic investiga-
tors, mediums and parapsychologists are made, but many of the accounts
are simply the descriptions of incidents by those who experienced them.
No attempts are made to critique the claimed recordings of paranormal
activity, the eyewitnesses claims about the nature and meaning of blurs of
light in photographs (which could be dust motes caught in the camera’s
flash), or strange moving blobs in CCTV cameras (which could easily be
insects or spiders moving across or very close to the lens). Similarly, evi-
dence of faulty reasoning in eyewitnesses’ narratives is also unchallenged.
For instance, in an episode of When Ghosts Attack, a witness contracts pneu-
monia and attributes this to the aggressive ghost in the bar they own as
a medium asserts this is what the ghost died of. Sometimes programmes
conclude with events unresolved. My Ghost Story uses captions to close off
each particular account with a kind of current status update, often indicat-
ing that the claimed experiences are continuing. Spokespeople for the wit-
nesses appear in talking heads on occasion in these shows, but the notion
of the veracity of testimony is again not treated as a problem, even when it
involves second-hand accounts.
In this sense, this group of programmes does not attempt to represent
these accounts within a scientific framework but it does essentially draw on
conventions and techniques of the expository documentary and, in fact,
some of the programmes use narrative conventions common to true crime
programme series like Forensic Files. A Haunting (2005–2015) offers the
most detailed dramatic reconstructions, concentrating each hour-long
episode on a single paranormal case, and is highly reminiscent of similarly
structured true crime shows. The production values of the dramatised
sequences are very high in this programme, with clear use of horror movie
tropes in its reconstructions of alleged hauntings—such as visual effects
reconstructions of apparitions, use of light and shadow and music and
sound effects to heighten tension and so on. Interspersed with eyewit-
nesses’ testimonies, sometimes with their testimony overlaid as narrative
on top of a dramatisation of the events being recounted, are talking head
interviews with a variety of investigators, psychic researchers, mediums
and parapsychologists involved with the cases. In the season one episode
‘Hell House’ this included Lorraine Warren, famous alongside her hus-
band Ed as the investigators of The Amityville Horror (1979), and whose
exploits have served as the basis for several films such as The Haunting in
Connecticut (2009) and The Conjuring (2013). The Amityville Horror is
mentioned by the narrator, and one of the children in the programme said
she was a bit concerned about ‘the Ghostbusters’ showing up and what
they could do to help. But whilst, therefore, horror movie tropes are evi-
dent in the visual composition of the series, at the same time the series also
invokes true crime programmes through not only using the same kind of
high-quality dramatic reconstructions but even using Anthony Call, who
also narrated several episodes of the true crime series The FBI Files, as its
narrator (1998–2009). Like those true crime programmes, A Haunting’s
format is to construct each case as an overarching chronological mystery
narrative with unexplained occurrences resulting in outside ‘expert’ con-
sultation—in the form of psychic researchers like the Warrens, mediums
and/or the clergy rather than the police or scientists—and some kind of
eventual resolution, though sometimes without the clear-cut equivalent of
the captured killer of a true crime programme. Again, as with the other
shows mentioned, there is no attempt to critique or question eyewitness
accounts, to evaluate physical evidence or to explain experiences in ways
other than it being a genuine haunting or possession. Indeed the care
and attention to the dramatic reconstructions presented seem all the more
designed to try and suggest a high level of plausibility in the accounts
being offered. The intrinsic paradox of being able to reconstruct claimed
paranormal experiences with a reasonably high level of verisimilitude using
conventional cinematic effects (there is little overt CGI in this series) and
what that might say about the veracity of the paranormal claims of wit-
nesses are also not discussed at all in these programmes.
An extension of this association of pseudoscience with true crime and
forensic science shows comes in the form of a number of programmes that
explicitly link crime and the paranormal. Psychic Detectives (2004–2008),
for instance, again uses the dramatic reenactment and talking head format
to talk through cases of actual crimes where psychics are claimed to have
been involved in the investigative process. Paralleling closely programmes
like Forensic Files, where forensic investigators contribute to criminal inves-
tigations, Psychic Detectives replaces forensic scientists with psychics. Scenes
of laboratory testing and imagery resulting from forensic testing, like bullet
striation microscope images, are replaced by scenes of a psychic ‘reading’
objects like bullets, with imagery offering flashes of what the psychic is ‘see-
ing’, such as in one case where a horse present at the scene of a murder is
‘read’ by the psychic, with accompanying dramatised reconstructions based
202 V. CAMPBELL
supposedly on what the horse experienced. Whilst investigating police

officers are shown expressing various degrees of ambivalence and caution
towards using psychics in cases, the programme does not critique or chal-
lenge the claims and methods of the psychic detectives.
Despite the absence of credible evidence of the contribution of psy-
chic ‘detectives’ to actually solving any criminal cases, a variety of psy-
chic detective programmes have appeared in recent years. Whilst Psychic
Detectives recounted closed cases where psychics claim to have made mate-
rial contributions, in other programmes the relationship between the psy-
chics and the cases vary significantly. In Psychic Investigators (2006–), for
instance, some cases state that psychics were not part of the official police
investigations of crimes, but the psychics nonetheless make claims about
their accurate knowledge of cases coming from the spirit-world (in the
form of dreams and/or visions) and turning out to be correct. In other
programmes, like the New Zealand/Australian series Sensing Murder
(2003–), psychics proactively and independently investigate unsolved
crimes. In the British series The Psychic Detective (2004) the protago-
nist of the series, medium and psychic Tony Stockwell, also deals with
unsolved historical cases, though often the focus is less on trying to solve
the crime per se than to give the victim’s family some kind of closure to
the traumatic events experienced. Taking quite a different tack to claim
the same kinds of end goals, the more recent American series Cell Block
Psychic (2014) sees a psychic deal with solved crimes, where perpetrators
have been caught and imprisoned, with a key sequence often being one
where the psychic confronts the perpetrator, using claimed messages from
the spirit-world to try to reveal still unknown details (such as where the
victims’ bodies are). All of the programmes, to varying extents and with
varying levels of production quality, use dramatised sequences to recon-
struct both known historical events and often the visions that the psychics
are experiencing during their investigations.
A key concern about such programmes, and expressed vehemently at
the launch of Cell Block Psychic, is how dangerous and counter-productive
such attempts at closure are from the perspective of victim support experts
(Moye 2014). This criticism is most pertinent regarding programmes
dealing with comparatively recent unsolved crimes, where families may
hold onto possibilities that missing victims may still be alive. The high-
profile, and at the time of writing still unsolved, case of the young British
girl Madeleine McCann’s disappearance in Portugal in 2007 was the focus
of an episode of the series Haunting Evidence in 2008, when the case
was still high profile in Britain. Haunting Evidence has a format where a
self-proclaimed ‘psychic profiler’, a medium and a parapsychologist work
as a team investigating cases. In their treatment of the McCann case, they
quickly rule out the parents (an early, false claim that generated much con-
troversial and salacious media coverage at the time), and the programme
culminates in a sequence at night in an abandoned farmhouse near the
coastal resort where the girl went missing. The psychic and medium, sup-
posedly separately, talk through their vision-based accounts of what they
say was an abduction, possibly to order, by a paedophile who subsequently
suffocates the child with a pillow, panicking with all the media attention
around the girl’s disappearance. Imagery of the abduction and murder
are shown in stylised dramatised sequences, interspersed with shots of the
psychics standing in the abandoned farmhouse.
Whilst the visual approach of these programmes is proximate to inves-
tigative true crime programmes, the investigative techniques used by the
psychics are all firmly in the realm of the pseudoscientific, including spirit
photography, psychometry (‘reading’ token objects to give information
about people), automatic writing (The Psychic Detective), clairvoyance,
mediumship and psychic readings of willing participants. None of these
techniques are considered to be valid investigative techniques by main-
stream science, as many of them suffer from an inability to be replicated
in controlled conditions, and some can be explained through other, non-
supernatural means. Mediumship practices, for instance, can be explained by
a combination of the medium, knowingly or otherwise, simply using gener-
alised statements and questions, and the details actually being filled in by the
subject of the reading as it progresses—a technique known as ‘cold reading’
(Goode 2013: 153). More nefariously, there is also the technique of ‘hot
reading’ where basically mediums are using information they’ve covertly
obtained prior to the reading (stage mediums have been accused of doing
this in a number of ways) (Brown 2006: 338). Both cold and hot reading
have been used by magicians and sceptics to show how the same outcomes
can be achieved explicitly not requiring any paranormal powers (Brown
2006). In psychic detective television programmes, on occasion, they are
at pains to suggest that no prior information is provided to the psychics.
Sensing Murder, in particular, tries to establish a sense of systematic process
by selecting a small number of psychics for a case based on their initial hit
rate in response to minimal information, from a pool of 100 psychics. The
viewer is told that the selected psychics then work entirely separately, given
only minimal information at the beginning of their investigations (such as
204 V. CAMPBELL
a photograph or object belonging to a crime victim). The film crews follow

the psychics, without apparently leading them to locations, and eventually
any leads the psychics uncover are investigated by a team of private investi-
gators with the aim of building a dossier of evidence to submit to the police.
Of course, there is no way for the viewer to check the veracity of the claims
about an absence of prior information, or whether the crew direct the psy-
chics, whether deliberately or not. In the way these programmes are edited
there is a clear presence of confirmation bias (Philips 2008) that is central to
how cold reading works. In other words there is a tendency to concentrate
on the psychic’s apparent hits, not on their misses. For instance, in one epi-
sode of Sensing Murder, a male psychic suggests several possible names asso-
ciated with the apparent case including Franklin, Ronald, Donald, Donnie,
Ronnie, Peter, Patrick, Paul, Charlie and Chalky. The narrator picks up the
name Paul, as it is the name of a serial killer who operated within close prox-
imity to the case under consideration and lived a few hundred metres away
from the scene of the crime. ‘Donnie’ is later identified as a possible mem-
ber of a gang who were in the vicinity. A possible, now-dead witness called
‘Bertie’ is uncovered by the team as well (linked to ‘Charlie/Chalky’ by the
team). An offender’s centre called ‘Franklin Court’ is found nearby too.
This technique, of offering several names, with the ones that in some way
can be linked to some aspect of the case noticed and the others ignored, is
a clear example of confirmation bias. Also, of course, the fact that apparent
details of the case the psychics come up with could have come from prior
knowledge is impossible to rule out in these programmes—despite their
claims to the contrary. They are often investigating high-profile missing
persons cases, widely covered by the media (archive news footage is regu-
larly used). In the Sensing Murder case, the serial killer had already been the
subject of a bestselling book. In that context of high-profile mass-mediated
crimes, the ‘details’ the psychics offer actually tend to be either information
already in the public domain that can be perused beforehand or highly gen-
eralised information that could be reasonably deduced without any need for
supernatural abilities (e.g. the idea that someone has been killed, violently,
with a knife, buried in an unpopulated spot). What is presented as meaning-
ful coincidence or correspondence between generalised comments made
by the psychics and details of the cases in such programmes (e.g. Sensing
Murder explicitly invokes Jung’s idea of ‘synchronicity’) can be explained
as a human tendency for probability misjudgement (Campbell 2000: 147;
Shermer 1997: 54). After all, a psychic’s claim as to whether a missing per-
son is dead or alive is, at worst, a fifty-fifty chance.
Despite these evident differences and arguably underlying epistemology

in terms of what constitutes investigative techniques and credible evidence,
the invocation of detection and witnesses paralleling crime series’ notions of
processes and evidence is not the only attempt to clearly associate some of
these programmes with the more evidential and scientific documentary and
factual entertainment programmes. Sensing Murder’s attempt to select psy-
chics in a systematic manner is an indication of this, for example. In Haunting
Evidence, the parapsychologist’s contribution is not only to film the psychics’
climactic set-piece visions of the crime, but also to attempt to capture para-
normal phenomena at the same time, such as through using infrared cam-
eras and audio recorders to capture so-called electronic voice phenomena
(EVPs). Interestingly the notion of the parapsychologist investigator as one
being associated with technologies, as opposed to supernatural talents like
clairvoyance, reflects a wider cultural shift in the representation of parapsy-
chology. Whilst parapsychologists have been around for some decades, fic-
tion films dealing with the paranormal originally situated parapsychologists
as people attempting to explain phenomena but with ‘little understanding’
(Ruffles 2004: 112) compared to the psychics. Over time parapsychologists’
screen image developed particularly with regard to their increasing use of
technologies as seen in films like Poltergeist (1982). Ruffles notes:
By the time of the Ghostbusters films (1984, 1989), cinema parapsycholo-

gists had become hi-tech, to the extent that the film’s pseudoscience has had
a strong impact on the public’s perception of what psychical research entails
and has even influenced the presentation of certain investigative groups.
(2004: 116)
This role of technology in some pseudoscience factual entertainment

programmes, and hence explicit efforts to use the trappings of science,
has developed into a distinctive category of programmes that turn the
pseudosciences into particular kinds of quests, hunts and chases.
CHASING ALIENS, HUNTING GHOSTS AND QUESTING

FOR MONSTERS
The programmes considered so far in this chapter either treat the pseu-
doscientific as unquestioned truths to be simply recounted within as con-
vincing a narrative as possible or, as in the case of the psychic detective
programmes, to treat pseudoscientific beliefs and practices as acceptable
206 V. CAMPBELL
tools to use in efforts to resolve real world crimes. In some of the lat-
ter programmes, a sense of attempting to convey a notion of systematic
and rigorous process is apparent. A particularly abundant group of pro-
grammes on the pseudosciences takes that notion of investigative process
further and in doing so clothe themselves in the trappings of science to
noticeable yet problematic extents. Across programmes about cryptids,
ghosts and aliens, a predominant format of pseudoscience programmes
has emerged in which the trappings of science are utilised in three regards:
the presence of scientists themselves, the presence of ‘scientific’ processes
and the presence of ‘scientific’ technologies.
These programmes are structured around an investigative team.
Sometimes this is fronted by a particular individual like Josh Gales in
Destination Truth (2007–2012), or Zak Bagans in Ghost Adventures
(2008–). On occasion it is a double act, such as the team comprising a
medium and a retired homicide detective in The Dead Files (2011–), but
more often it is a team of three to five people (plus a larger crew that is
sometimes visible, sometimes not). The teams usually consist of a variety
of experts in the field, such as cryptozoologists, ufologists or parapsy-
chologists, with ghost-hunting programmes often including mediums and
psychics too (Most Haunted). Sometimes they include people who claim
to have had personal experiences with the phenomena under investiga-
tion, such as having seen ghosts (Paranormal State 2007–2011), aliens
(Uncovering Aliens 2014) and so on. In this sense there’s a clear pseudo-
scientific notion of opening research to lay people (Cross 2004: 8) with
programmes sometimes centred on explicitly non-specialist non-scientists
interested in particular phenomena. Ghost Hunters, for example, began
as part docu-soap contrasting the daily lives of plumbers with their part-
time ghost-hunting activities. Similarly, Paranormal Cops (2010) was cen-
tred on a group of Chicago detectives who investigated the paranormal
in their time off. Similarly, Paranormal State was centred on university
students and Search for the Lost Giants (2014) focused on two stone-
mason brothers (convinced of the existence of giants in the near-human
past). A number of programmes deliberately include a single mainstream
scientist, routinely constructed as the sceptic of the group, such as a
biologist (Finding Bigfoot), a radiation scientist (Chasing UFOs 2012),
a mechanical engineer (UFO Hunters 2008–2009) and an aeronautical
engineer (Uncovering Aliens). In Most Haunted the parapsychologist is
positioned as the sceptical scientist, the role of the ‘sceptic’ in such pro-
grammes being to provide a counter-narrative or rebuttal to the claims
of witnesses, to review evidence captured during the investigation and to

invoke a systematic, scientific perspective. Fact or Fake: The Paranormal
Files (2010–2012) sets itself up as a team out to test claims across different
pseudosciences, in essence presenting all of its team in a sceptical position.
More generally though, these programmes do not foreground the scepti-
cal figures, and they are arguably tokenistic, adding a veneer of credibility
through their presence and, whilst being allowed on occasion to question
the central claims of the programmes, their perspective is not allowed to
close off the possibility of the phenomena being real.
These programmes also try to construct themselves as following pro-
cesses that are presented as systematic, rigorous and scientific. Sometimes
this comes from the use of external scientific experts who are sent videos,
audios and specimens for lab analysis, and whose commentary is included
in the programmes (Monster Quest 2007–2010, Alien Investigations 2012,
Destination Truth, Search for the Lost Giants). Sometimes it comes in the
form of the investigative teams themselves engaging in experiments to test
eyewitness claims, such as experimenting with lights and cameras to try
and reproduce UFO footage (Fact or Fake, Uncovering Aliens, Chasing
UFOs) or trying to replicate bigfoot footprints (Finding Bigfoot). A focus
on interviewing eyewitnesses and using them as a basis for investigation
locations is common in the cryptozoology and ufology programmes,
where they depend on multiple sightings to focus on areas for exploration.
The use of a local meeting to gather accounts and select cases is seen in
Chasing UFOs, Uncovering Aliens and Finding Bigfoot. Archival informa-
tion, such as prior media accounts in local papers, features regularly too
(Chasing UFOs, Search for the Lost Giants, Paranormal Cops). Often the
programmes end in reveal sequences, particularly the ghost-hunting pro-
grammes, where the eyewitnesses are presented with the investigation’s
evidence and the conclusions of the team. Some of these programmes do
offer alternative explanations for the claimed phenomena—Ghost Hunters
International (2008–2012) confidently tells some of its witnesses that its
properties are not haunted, for instance—though the premise of such phe-
nomena being possible at all is not questioned.
Central to the types of investigations conducted by these programmes
are physical explorations of spaces, such as walking around buildings, grave-
yards and woods; up mountains; diving into lakes; and going into caves.
But arguably the signature process of these pseudoscience programmes is
a night-time ‘stakeout’ (UFO Hunters), ‘lockdown’ (Ghost Adventures)
or ‘vigil’ (Most Haunted). In these investigations the trappings of science
208 V. CAMPBELL
become evident in the use of an array of technologies that have become

associated with pseudosciences, including directional audio equipment to
pick up EVPs, tri-field electro-magnetic frequency metres (in Paranormal
Cops this comes with a light that is allegedly triggered by spirits), thermom-
eters, magnetometers and Geiger counters. But most notable are the visual
technologies that have come to symbolise these programmes: the green hue
of night-vision cameras (a signature style of early Most Haunted episodes),
the black-and-white image of infrared cameras, the purple-to-white hues
of thermal cameras and also the purple hue of full spectrum cameras (the
latter seen in Haunting Australia 2014) (see Fig. 7.1). These programmes
then concentrate on footage of the investigative teams reacting to appar-
ent sounds, movements and feelings, with replayed and enhanced images
or sounds where supposed unusual shapes, lights, movements or EVPs
are recorded. Pareidolia is frequent in these programmes, where claims of
faces in wisps of light and shadow and EVPs apparently forming words
reflect more the tendency of humans to see patterns in randomness (e.g.
seeing faces in the clouds) than convincing phenomena. Natural markings
on an underwater cave in Searching for the Lost Giants are interpreted by
the investigators as carved murals of giants’ faces, for example, and per-
sistent claims of so-called ‘Class A’ EVPs, where words are very clear in
several programmes, are significantly open to question (Ghost Adventures,
Fig. 7.1 Ghost Adventures (Izzy and Jenny Acevedo, Travel Channel, 2009)
Paranormal Cops and also Haunting Evidence mentioned earlier). Sounds

are replayed, with subtitles indicating the claimed words that are heard
to try and anchor the interpretation of them. Whilst a few programmes,
particularly Most Haunted and Ghost Hunters International, make some
effort to contextualise these phenomena and acknowledge their limitations,
in general the paraphernalia of these set-piece investigations provide little
additional evidence to the phenomena being investigated.
As these shows have become ever more stylised in this regard, the ques-
tion of what kind of experience is on offer here really comes to the fore.
Not one of these many programmes, across many years and hundreds of
episodes, has produced a single piece of photographic, video, audio or
physical evidence that has been accepted as credible by mainstream sci-
ence to lend credence to claims of ghosts, aliens or cryptids, and these
shows continue to draw criticism from mainstream researchers and even
complaints to regulators. Complaints made to the UK broadcasting regu-
lator OfCom about the series Most Haunted, for instance, were rejected
partly on the grounds that the foregrounding of investigative techniques
were actually evidence of the show’s status as entertainment rather than
documentary. This was because the use of these techniques—such as
night-vision—could be seen to be contributing to the dramatic rather than
realistic nature of the show (Koven 2007: 196). By contrast, Koven argues
that this kind of showing of the technological process overtly within pro-
grammes is actually a marker of their claims to the real (2007: 197). He
argues of Most Haunted, where members of the crew like the sound opera-
tor and make-up artist also feature in front of the camera:
The laying-bare of its own construction wherein the cameras, cables, and
sound equipment are often in-shot and the show’s crew become central
characters in the investigation… increases the show’s veracity by demystifying
the investigative methods, techniques and videographic excesses[.] (Koven
2007: 197, original emphasis)
Given the number of programmes that now utilise these techniques to

varying degrees almost a decade on from Koven’s consideration of Most
Haunted, it is possible to situate these programmes more precisely now
that what was once distinctive has become something of a set of con-
ventions. Koven is right in one sense to argue that by revealing parts
of ‘the construction of the show’ this indicates ‘attempts to validate
its own truth-claims regarding its investigations’ (Koven 2007: 198).
210 V. CAMPBELL
Criticisms of science programmes discussed in previous chapters have

often centred on the absence of the presentation of processes behind
the claims on display, so the presence of process here could indeed be
seen as a clear attempt to make documentary and scientific truth-claims.
Alternatively, this can be seen as cementing such programmes’ status
as pseudoscientific by foregrounding a set of techniques and processes
that have merely the trappings of science. Alongside the technical equip-
ment, inclusion of the crew in-shot, showing cameras being set up, shaky
hand-held camera movements and sounds captured during preparation
and set-up shots and so on, are also parallel trappings of documentary
used to try and sustain the claims to the real of such programmes. Far
from increasing ‘the veracity’ of such programmes’ ‘presented evidence’
(Koven 2007: 198), these techniques merely signal such programmes’
desire to be seen as claiming the real, again suggesting these programmes
are clearly subjunctive documentaries in the sense used in this chapter.
Moreover, many of these techniques and processes have been shaped
by fictional representations of pseudoscientific activities both in film as
mentioned earlier (Ruffles 2004: 116) and also in television programmes
like Ghostwatch (1992), a controversial BBC drama structured like a live
television factual programme. Using multiple camera set-ups, thermal
cameras, interviews with witnesses and investigative teams staying the
night in a haunted house, Ghostwatch integrated the formats of horror
films and live television factual programming effectively enough that,
when shown on Halloween in 1992, it generated multiple complaints
and comparison to the infamous Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio
broadcast (Leeder 2013; Steward and Zborowski 2014). How much
Ghostwatch directly influenced the emergence of ghost-hunting shows
a decade or so later is uncertain but many of the techniques used in
that fictional programme have become staples of factual entertainment
programmes on the paranormal. In turn, the shaky night-vision camera
trope of these programmes has become a significant feature of horror
films using a documentary aesthetic (Leeder 2013) in ‘found footage’
films like Paranormal Activity (2007).
One relatively recent subtle change to some of these programmes’ use
of visual technology effectively signposts the focus of these programmes
away from scientific investigation of these phenomena and towards
experience-centred entertainment. Programmes like Chasing UFOs,
Finding Bigfoot and Haunting Australia have begun to include camera-rigs
on investigators with the camera being pointed at the investigator’s face.
Nominally these free the investigators to hold other equipment that can
more easily capture the targets of the investigation without the con-
tinual turning of cameras onto themselves, for instance, or necessarily
needing extra crew filming them to get their facial responses to experi-
ences (although these programmes continue to use extra film crew and/
or fixed-rig cameras to get those kinds of shots as well). One of the
things this does though is tacitly acknowledge that the focus of such
programmes is less on the possibility of ghosts, aliens or cryptids being
caught in the nightly investigations, and more about the entertainment
coming from the investigators’ experiences. These shows are as much if
not more about the investigators as they are about the investigations,
and the camera-rigs on the investigators point to this very clearly. The
reaction camera-rigs actually reinforce Koven’s wider claim about Most
Haunted that arguably applies to many of these shows in that they offer
a form of ‘ostensive entertainment’ (2007: 198) where experiences are
presented or shown, rather than represented or told. Instead of under-
taking scientific studies, the on-screen investigators are in effect taking
part in ‘legend-trips’ where, instead of merely investigating, the goal
is to travel to ‘a specific location attached to a legend in the hopes of
witnessing some kind of phenomena as if in the legend itself’ (Koven
2007: 186, original emphasis). The goal here is not investigation but
affirmation through experience, whereby ‘a truly terrifying encounter
at a legend-site ensures a kind of legendary immortality to the trip-
pers’ (Koven 2007: 186). In the shows considered here, the absence of
substantive, credible evidence time after time does not seem to bring
the investigators down or temper their beliefs; indeed it is often their
immediate experiences of shock, fear, alarm and uncertainty that are the
core imagery, presented as affirmations of possibility. In the legend-trip
the ultimate goal for participants (and by extension the viewers of such
programmes as well as the on-screen investigators) ‘is that they “do
not disbelieve”’ (Koven 2007: 200). Whilst this provides an interest-
ing means of trying to understand the intrinsic nature and appeal of
such programmes, it reaffirms their status relative to the concerns of
this book, as pseudoscientific subjunctive documentaries. The real visual
warning sign of subjunctive documentaries then is arguably not CGI but
the various technologies of night-vision, infrared and thermal cameras
used as tools for affirmations of pseudoscientific beliefs in ghosts, aliens
and monsters lurking in the dark.
212 V. CAMPBELL
CONCLUSION: RESURRECTING THE ‘CORPSE’ OF SCIENCE

TELEVISION?
This book has explored the relationships between a variety of sciences and
the representational strategies used by contemporary factual entertainment
and documentary programmes. In this chapter, a discussion of pseudoscience
documentaries has put into context some of the principle concerns that
have been expressed about the trends towards factual entertainment and
away from traditional documentary in the presentation of science in fac-
tual television. Concerns centre particularly on the widespread and ever-
increasing use of CGI, leading to accusations of superficial spectacle,
supposition and guesswork overriding scientific knowledge and processes,
and in turn an elision of scientific debate, controversy and science-centred
geopolitical issues (like climate change). Even key figures in contemporary
science television, like Brian Cox, express concern about how these trends
increase the tension between the televisual needs of drama and spectacle
and the needs of dissemination of the consensual scientific knowledge and
theory of the day (2010). Some see a risk of science documentaries shift-
ing into subjunctive documentaries (Wolf 1999; Metz 2008), where CGI
and other techniques are seen as particularly problematic, subordinating
the realities of scientific processes and knowledge in the interests of enter-
taining imagery. Pseudoscience factual entertainment programmes, on the
other hand, use a different set of techniques, rarely CGI for instance, but
nonetheless construct narratives offering far more subjunctive claims about
the existence of cryptids, aliens and ghosts, using the trappings of both sci-
ence and documentary to do so. In doing so, such programmes arguably
far better reflect the concerns about the ‘rotting corpse’ of contemporary
science television referred to at the very beginning of the book (Switek
2012). In the fragmented multi-channel, multi-platform environment of
twenty-first century television, the struggle for attention and engagement
to science programmes has never been greater, and the competition for
attention from pseudoscience, often on the same channels, is fiercer still.
Whether or not the continuing changing landscape of television, par-
ticularly the rise of streaming services like Netflix and their move into
factual programme production, will exacerbate or ameliorate these prob-
lems is uncertain. The increasing adoption of new visual techniques and
technologies is more certain to continue, however, and with the next
generation of ultra high definition ‘4K’ televisions already in the market,
and CGI technologies becoming ever more accomplished, the potential
for visually stunning science programmes to appear in future seems to be

very high. This book has shown that the use of new techniques like CGI
in the construction of factual programmes and documentaries should not
be simplistically seen as a problematic break from the traditions of the
sober discourses of science documentary. Instead, their use builds on a
wide array of visual techniques that go back to the earliest days of televi-
sion science programmes (and beyond to earlier science films). Just like
many of those films and television programmes, both the oft-forgotten
pioneers (like The Nature of Things) and the fondly remembered classics
(like Cosmos), innovation and experimentation in turning science into
compelling visual narratives both does and needs to continue to be a major
feature of the treatment of science in documentary. But rather than see
this as merely efforts to maintain the presence of television content that
is geared towards the mere dissemination of scientific knowledge, these
are also often efforts to engage audiences through presenting impossible
pictures that when done effectively may resurrect science as a range of
subjects offering audiences wonder, awe and the sublime.
REFERENCES
Brewer, P. R. (2012). The trappings of science: Media messages, scientific author-
ity, and beliefs about paranormal investigators. Science Communication, 35(3),
311–333.
Brown, D. (2006). Tricks of the mind. London: Transworld Publishers.
Campbell, V. (2006). Science, public relations, and the media: Problems of
knowledge and interpretation. In J. L’Etang & M. Pieczka (Eds.), Public rela-
tions: Critical debates and contemporary problems. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
Corner, J. (1996). The art of record: A critical introduction to documentary.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Cox, B. (2010, December 1). Science—A challenge to TV orthodoxy. Huw
Wheldon lecture 2010. BBC, broadcast.
Cross, A. (2004). The flexibility of scientific rhetoric: A case study of UFO
researchers. Qualitative Sociology, 27(1), 3–34.
Dolby, R. G. A. (1979). Reflections on deviant science. In R. Wallis (Ed.), On the
margins of science: The social construction of rejected knowledge. Keele: University
of Keele Press.
214 V. CAMPBELL
Fagan, G. G. (Ed.). (2006). Archaeological fantasies: How pseudoarchaeology mis-

represents the past and misleads the public. London: Routledge.
Fara, P. (2009). Science: A four thousand year history. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Gilovich, T. (1991). How we know what isn’t so: The fallibility of human reason in
everyday life. New York: The Free Press.
Goode, E. (2013). Paranormalism and pseudoscience as deviance. In M. Pigliucci
& M. Boudry (Eds.), Philosophy of pseudoscience: Reconsidering the demarcation
problem. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Hansson, S. O. (2013). Defining science and pseudoscience. In M. Pigliucci &
M. Boudry (Eds.), Philosophy of pseudoscience: Reconsidering the demarcation
problem. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Hansson, S. O. (2015). Science and pseudo-science. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The
Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, Spring 2015 Edition. http://plato.stanford.
edu/archives/spr2015/entries/pseudo-science/. Accessed 4 June 2015.
Hill, A. (2011). Paranormal media: Audiences, spirits and magic in popular cul-
ture. London: Routledge.
Holt, N. J., Simmonds-Moore, C., Luke, D., & French, C. C. (2012). Anomalistic
psychology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kovacs, L. (2006). The haunted screen: Ghosts in literature and film. London:
McFarland & Company.
Koven, M. J. (2007). Most haunted and the convergence of traditional belief and
popular television. Folklore, 118(2), 183–202.
Kuhn, T. S. (1996). The structure of scientific revolutions (3rd ed.). Chicago:
Leeder, M. (2013). Ghostwatch and the haunting of media. Horror Studies, 4(2),
173–186.
McGuire, A., & Buchbinder, D. (2010). The forensic gothic: Knowledge, the
supernatural, and the psychic detective. Canadian Review of American Studies,
40(3), 289–307.
Metz, A. M. (2008). A fantasy made real: The evolution of the subjunctive docu-
mentary on US cable science channels. Television and New Media, 9(1),
333–348.
Moye, D. (2014, April 17). “Cell Block Psychic” TV show is “Abhorrent” to
those who work with victims. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.
com/2014/04/17/cell-block-psychic_n_5160303.html. Accessed 17 June
2015.
University Press.
Philips, M. (2008). The undercover philosopher: A guide to detecting shams, lies and
delusions. Oxford: Oneworld.
Pigliucci, M., & Boudry, M. (Eds.). (2013). Philosophy of pseudoscience:
Reconsidering the demarcation problem. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Richman, H., & Bell, C. (2012). Paranormal beliefs then and now. North American
Journal of Psychology, 14(1), 197–206.
Ruffles, T. (2004). Ghost images: Cinema of the afterlife. London: McFarland &
Company.
Shermer, M. (1997). Why people believe weird things: Pseudoscience, superstition,
and other confusions of our time. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.
Sokal, A. D. (2006). Pseudoscience and postmodernism: Antagonists or fellow
travellers? In G. G. Fagan (Ed.), Archaeological fantasies: How pseudoarchaeol-
ogy misrepresents the past and misleads the public. London: Routledge.
Steward, T., & Zborowski, J. (2014). (G)hosting television: Ghostwatch and its
medium. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 11(2–3), 189–212.
Switek, B. (2012, July 31). Mermaids embodies the rotting carcass of science TV.
Wired. http://www.wired.com/2012/05/mermaids-embodies-the-rotting-
carcass-of-science-tv/. Accessed 28 July 2015.
Wiseman, R. (2011). Paranormality: Why we see what isn’t there. London: Pan
Macmillan.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Boffin, H. M. J. (2011). Astronomy and the media: A love story? In D. Valls-
Gabaud & A. Boksenberg (Eds.), The role of astronomy in society and culture
proceedings IAU symposium no. 260, 2009, pp. 405–410.
James, M. (2009, May 31). Pick of the day. The Sunday Times, p. 60.
Jones, S. (2012). The lexicon of offence: The meanings of torture, porn, and
“torture porn”. In F. Atwood, V. Campbell, I. Q. Hunter, & S. Lockyer (Eds.),
Controversial images. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lipps, J. H. (2003). Into focus: Palaeontology: A candle in the dark. Palaeontologia
Electronica, 6(2). http://palaeo-electronica.org/paleo/2003_2/editor/focus.
htm. Accessed 6 July 2005.
Preston, J. (2007, April 22). Between desire and loathing. The Sunday Telegraph,
p. 25.

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-38538-3
INDEX
A Anders, Bill, 63
A&E Network, 2, 58 Angry Planet, 161, 165, 176
Adams, Ansel, 71 animal fables, 111, 113–15, 117–18
aesthetics, 7, 67, 69–70, 74, 80, 91, Animal Planet, 3, 8
127, 131–2, 134 Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?, 4–5, 126
affect, 20, 145, 148, 152, 173, 181 animation, 4–5, 12, 14, 18, 36–45,
After Armageddon, 178, 180 50, 59, 65, 83, 89, 95–97, 103,
Aftermath: Population Zero, 167, 178, 106, 133, 139, 144, 151
180 An Inconvenient Truth, 157–8, 175, 179
agency (human), 120–21, 155, 157, anthropomorphism, 35, 113–14
168, 170–72, 174–6, 180–81 Around the World in 80 Treasures, 128
A Haunting, 200–1 Ascent of Man, The, 7, 127
Alien Investigations, 207 astronomical images/imaging, 19, 41,
Aliens (extra-terrestrial life), 2, 37, 47, 49, 55, 64–67, 69–76, 80–81, 91
55, 72, 80–81, 83–84, 87–92, Atlantis: End of a World, Birth of a
177, 187–8, 196–9, 205–7, 209, Legend, 140–41, 145
211–12 Atlantis: The Evidence, 140
Alien Worlds (aka Extraterrestrial), 37, Attenborough, David, 5, 7–10, 13,
47, 80, 83–84, 87, 89–90, 195 21, 53, 95–96, 106–7
amateur footage, 9, 20, 46, 162–5, audiences, 6–9, 11, 13, 28, 30, 43,
168, 174 47–49, 52, 66, 68, 100, 109–10,
Amityville Horror, The, 200–01 112, 141, 163, 181, 187,
An American Family, 146 189–90, 213
Ancient Aliens, 186, 197, 199 authenticity, 20, 29–30, 32, 45–47,
Ancient Apocalypse, 142–3 51, 68–69, 84, 145, 162
Ancient Discoveries, 129, 144 Ax Men, 11

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-38538-3
220 INDEX
B Carter, Howard, 3
Badlands, 68 Catastrophe, 161, 165–6
Bagans, Zak, 206 Cell Block Psychic, 202
Ballad of Big Al, The, 100, 111, 118 Channel 4 (UK), 7, 16
Battlefield Britain, 133, 144 Channel 5 (UK), 16
Battle 360, 133, 138 Chasing UFOs, 206–7, 210
British Broadcasting Corporation City Beneath the Waves: Pavlopetri,
(BBC), 2, 4–9, 11, 13, 15–17, 134–5, 139
21, 33–34, 46, 53, 55, 82, Civilisation, 7
95–96, 101, 104, 110, 130, claims to the real, 18, 20, 28, 30–36,
134–5, 137, 141–2, 146, 158, 44–45, 51, 56, 66, 133, 138,
160–61, 171, 196, 210 141, 143–5, 148, 158, 162–3,
Beat the Ancestors, 130 186, 189, 194, 209–10
Bell Television Series, 5–6 Clash of the Dinosaurs, 103–4, 107
Bible Mysteries Explained, 131, 142 climate change, 121, 156–7, 159, 168,
Bible’s Buried Secrets, 130 175–7, 179, 187
Bierstadt, Albert, 71 Close Encounters, 199–200
Big Bang Theory, The, 78 Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
Big Brother, 10, 147 69
Big Cat Diary, 11 Cloverfield, 163
Blackout, 158 computer generated imagery (CGI), 1,
Blair Witch Project, The, 163 11–12, 14, 18–20, 27–29, 35–41,
Blue chip documentaries, 34–35, 100, 43–51, 55, 57–59, 64–65, 68–69,
104–5, 108, 115 75, 79–80, 82–83, 86–87, 91,
Blue Planet, The, 2, 34, 53, 101 95–105, 107–109, 113, 115,
Bonestall, Chesley, 71 117–21, 130–45, 149–52, 159,
Braga, Brannon, 77–78 162, 165, 167–8, 171, 187, 199,
Branagh, Kenneth, 100 201, 211–13
Britain’s Drowned World, 143 Conjuring, The, 201
Britain’s Most Extreme Weather, 162, Contact (1933), 4
165 Contact (1994), 196
Britain’s Secret Treasures, 128 Cops, 9
Britain’s Stone Age Tsunami, 143 Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, 7, 11–15,
Bronowski, Jacob, 7 32, 64, 176, 187, 213
Brooks, Avery, 100 Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, 12–13,
Bruno, Giordano, 68, 198–9 65, 67, 72–73, 76–79, 83, 87,
Building Pharaoh’s Chariot, 129, 144 91, 116, 176, 187, 191–2, 199
Buried Treasure, 128, 149 Cousteau, Jacques, 5, 126
Cox, Brian, 13, 33, 72–74, 76, 84–85,
88–90, 187, 212
C Crime 360, 57–59
candy apple neon (visual style), 67, Crime Science Investigation (CSI),
70–73, 86 57–58, 150
Capra, Frank, 5 Crocodile Hunter, The, 10
INDEX 221
Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course, E

The, 10 Earth, 53, 101
Cronkite, Walter, 97 Eaten Alive, 1, 10
Cryptozoology, 21, 188, 193, 207 Educating Essex, 10
CSI. See Crime Science Investigation Egypt’s Lost Cities, 134–6
(CSI) Culloden, 144 End: Day, 161, 165–6, 168, 177
End of the World Night, 161, 176–7
epistemology, 30–32, 59, 138, 205
D experience/experiential, 20, 28, 42,
Daniel, Glyn, 4, 125 44, 46–50, 53–54, 74, 84, 86,
Da Vinci Code, The, 131 112, 141, 146–8, 162–3, 165,
Day After Disaster, 168 171–4, 178, 180–1, 195,
Dead Files, The, 206 199–202, 206, 209–11
Deadliest Catch, The, 11 experimental archaeology, 20, 129–30,
Decisive Battles, 144 139, 144, 146–8
Deep Blue, 53, 101 expository documentary, 40, 129,
Destination Truth, 206–7 133, 200
Destroyed in Seconds, 160, 162 Extinct, 107, 115, 120–21
Dinosaur!, 97 eyewitness accounts, 133, 138, 140,
Dinosaur Planet, 102, 107, 109, 111, 158, 171, 173–4, 177, 180, 189,
116–118 195–7, 199–201, 207
Dinosaur Revolution, 101
Dinotasia, 101, 105, 109–10, 116
Disaster Eyewitness, 156, 162 F
disaster movies, 20, 54, 159, 163, Fact or Fake: The Paranormal Files,
167, 169–71, 176, 180–81 207
Disaster Planet, 165, 168, 170, 173, factual entertainment
175 documentary and, 3–4, 16, 19, 27,
Discovery Channel, 1, 2, 6, 8, 9 41, 49, 51–52, 55–57. 59,
Disney 63–64. 87, 95, 97, 121–2, 142,
Disney (company), 6, 110 145, 155–156, 158–159, 181,
Disneyland, 5, 14, 77 194–195, 205
Disney, Walt, 5 programmes, 10, 14, 17–18, 21, 31,
Doctor Who, 55, 102 33, 38, 40–41, 47, 50–52, 56,
documentary modes, 31, 39–42, 64, 71, 74, 78, 80–81, 84, 86,
44–46, 50, 59, 101, 103, 185–6 92, 121, 156, 158–159, 162,
docu-soap, 2, 10–11, 33, 50, 146, 175–177, 179–181, 185–186,
176, 186, 206 188–190, 194, 196–197, 205,
Doomsday Preppers, 11, 177–8 210, 212
drama documentary (docudrama), 33, techniques, 20–21, 64, 130, 145,
130, 141, 158, 172 152, 159, 187
dramatised sequences, 4–5, 12, 14, Family, The, 146
102, 162, 168–9, 172, 200, Family Guy, 12
202 Fantasia, 110
222 INDEX
Fantasy, 6, 37, 47–48, 118, 141 subjunctive archaeological, 134,

FBI Files, The, 201 136, 138–9, 141–2, 151
film, 3–6, 9–12, 14–16, 19, 21, 27, weather porn, 166
29–30, 33–36, 39–40, 44, 46–48, Gertie the Dinosaur, 97
53, 56, 64–65, 68–70, 77, 97, Ghost Adventures, 206–9
99–102, 104, 109–110, 112–116, Ghostbusters, 205
118, 121, 125–126, 129, 137, Ghost Hunters, 186, 206
144–145, 158, 160, 162–3, Ghost Hunters International, 207, 209
165–6, 168–70, 172–4, 176–7, Ghostwatch, 2010
201, 204–5, 210–11, 213 Giant Claw, The, 101–2, 107
Finding Bigfoot, 186, 206–07, 210 Global Catastrophe, 161
500 Nations, 37 Goodman, John, 110
Flaherty, Robert, 4, 144 grand tour, 65, 74, 76–80
Flintstones, The, 110 graphic verité (CGI style), 45–47, 65,
flood (Biblical), 54, 115–17, 119, 69, 79, 87, 91, 101, 103, 105–6,
141, 179–80 135–40, 144, 151, 165
Flying Monsters, 96, 103, 106–07, Grierson, John, 4, 30
117 Groundhog Day, 169
Forbidden History, 131
Forensic Files, 56, 200–01
forensic science, 28, 45, 50, 56–59, H
103, 129, 139, 149–151, Hanger 1: UFO Files, 197
200–01 Haunting Australia, 208, 210
Fox (network/channels), 2, 13 Haunting Evidence, 51, 202–3, 205,
framing, 17, 20, 34, 54, 55, 67, 209
69–70, 74–76, 81, 86–87, 108, Haunting in Connecticut, The, 201
113, 128, 132, 140–41, 150, Hawking, Stephen, 37, 67, 72, 77, 82,
162, 166, 175, 181, 188 88, 90, 177
Freeman, Morgan, 83 Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, 2
Frontier House, 146 Herschel, John, 63
Full Force Nature, 161, 173 Herzog, Werner, 101, 105, 110
Future is Wild, The, 47 Heyerdahl, Thor, 5, 129
History Channel, 2, 8, 146, 167, 197
History Cold Case, 51, 139, 149
G Hollywood, 5, 8, 35, 54, 68–69, 96,
Gales, Josh, 206 110, 137
Gambon, Michael, 53 Horizon, 7, 32, 108, 196
game shows, 1, 4, 10, 126, 130, 144 How the Universe Works, 67, 72–73, 75
Gaze Human Universe, 72–76, 85, 88–89,
archaeological, 131–4, 136, 138–9, 91
141–2, 151–2 Human Voltage: Struck by Lightning,
kinetic, 80 160
magisterial, 74–77, 83, 86, 132 hybridity, 1, 10–11, 17, 33, 64, 111,
reverential, 74–75 118, 185
INDEX 223
I Land of the Mammoth, 115, 120

Ice Age, 110 Last Days on Earth, 161, 165,
Ice Age Giants, 107–8, 110, 115 167–168, 176–7
Iceman Autopsy, 149 Learning Channel, The (TLC), 2
Iceman Murder Mystery, 149 Lee, Spike, 157, 173–4
Ice Road Truckers, 11 Life After People, 167, 171, 178, 180
Incredible Human Journey, The, 121 Life on Earth, 7–9, 11, 32, 34, 187
Independent Television (ITV), 6–7, Life Story, 46
16, 160 live-action, 5, 39, 42–46, 57, 83, 104,
indexicality, 29–30, 32, 35–36, 39, 43, 151
45, 59, 98, 136–137 Living in the Past, 146
In Search of Aliens, 198 Lost Evidence, The, 133, 137–8
Inside Nature’s Giants, 51, 103 Lost Kingdoms of Central America
Into the Storm, 163 Lost World, The, 96, 117
Into the Universe with Stephen Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives, 95
Hawking, 67, 72, 88, 90 Lucas, George, 69–70
invasive surveillance (CGI style), 50, Lumière brothers, 3
58, 65, 103, 136, 150
Irwin, Steve, 10, 102
M
Macfarlane, Seth, 12
J Machines Time Forgot, 129, 144
Johns Hopkins Science Review, 5 Malick, Terence, 68
Journey to the Edge of the Universe, 67, March of the Dinosaurs, 100–101,
76, 79 104–8, 110, 112, 116, 118
Jungle Atlantis, 134 March of the Penguins, The, 114
Jurassic CSI, 51, 103, 108 Marshall, Roy K., 4
Jurassic Park, 11, 48, 107, 110 Martin, John, 54, 181
Marven, Nigel, 101–103, 107, 119
Mayday (aka Air Crash Investigation),
K 155
Kaku, Michio, 37, 82 Medieval Dead, 149
Kate Humble: Into the Volcano, 165, Meet the Ancestors, 129, 149–150
172 Mermaids, 3
King Kong, 117 Meteor Strike: Fireball from Space, 177
King Tut’s Mysterious Death, 150 Miss Jane Goodall and the Wild
King Tut Unwrapped, 150 Chimpanzees, 6
Knight, Charles R., 115 mock documentaries, 2–3
Kon-Tiki, 5, 129 Monster Quest, 207
Monsters Resurrected, 117
Monsters we Met, 120
L Moonwalk One, 44, 65
Land Before Time, The, 118 Moore, Patrick, 5
Land of the Giants, 101, 107 Most Haunted, 190, 206–9, 211
224 INDEX
Mummies Alive, 139, 149, 151 1940s House, 146

Mummy Autopsy, 149 Noah’s Ark: The Real Story, 141
Museum Secrets, 129 North American Space Administration
Muybridge, Eadweard, 3, 29 (NASA), 63, 65, 81
My Ghost Story, 199–200 Nostalgia for the Light, 86
Mythology/Myths, 76, 92, 138, 141, NOVA, 6–7
143, 152, 179–81, 188
O
N 102 Minutes that Changed America,
Nanook of the North, 4, 144 163
narrative, 10, 12, 16–17, 19–21, 27, One Million Years B.C., 97, 117
31–35, 40, 44, 52, 54–57, 59, Operation Stonehenge, 137, 139
67, 74, 76–81, 87, 89, 91, Outback House, 146
99–100, 103–6, 108–11, 113–22,
127–32, 134, 137–43, 145, 147,
149–50, 152, 157–9, 164–6, P
168–1, 185, 187–9, 196–201, palaeoimagery, 19, 49, 98–99, 108,
205–6, 212–13 112–15, 121, 132
NASA. See North American Space Paleoworld, 97
Administration (NASA) paranormal, 2, 51, 188–90, 199–201,
National Geographic 203, 205–6, 210
channel, 8, 13–14, 103, 135, 160, Paranormal Activity, 210
163, 177 Paranormal Cops, 206–9
society, 6 Paranormal State, 206
natural history, 1, 7, 10–11, 16, 19, Paranormal Witness, 199
27, 33–35, 45–46, 51, 53, 64, parapsychology, 21, 188, 193–4, 205
96, 99–104, 109–10, 112–15, Particle Fever, 86
118, 121, 162 perceptual realism, 47, 59, 69, 101–2,
Natural History Museum Alive, 96, 104, 111
102, 110, 121 Perfect Disasters, 163, 165, 167–8,
Natural History Unit, 7, 34 171
Nature of Things, The, 4, 213 performance, 10–11, 13, 128, 144–5,
Nature’s Fury, 161, 165, 180 172
NBC, 4 photography, 3, 14, 28–31, 34, 36,
Neanderthal, 121 40–41, 43, 50, 55–56, 63, 65–68,
Neanderthal Code, 121 70–71, 80, 132–3, 137, 200, 203
Neill, Sam, 74, 76, 87 photorealism, 43–44, 47, 58–59, 69
Netflix, 9, 212 Planet Dinosaur, 101, 105, 116
New Detectives, The, 56–57 Planet Earth, 2, 53, 101
Night at the Museum, 110 Planet of the Apemen: Battle for Earth,
1900 House, The, 146 121
INDEX 225
Planet of the Apes, 167 reality TV, 10, 20, 50, 130, 146, 148,
Planets, The, 77, 86 190
politics, 9, 32, 34, 63–64, 77, 85–86, Redford, Robert, 8
109, 121, 132, 136, 140, 147–8, Reenactments, 1, 11, 14, 42, 56, 77,
157–9, 163, 169–1, 173–4, 177, 127, 130, 140, 143–146, 148–9,
187, 191 151, 159, 199–200
Poltergeist, 205 Reinventors, The, 130
Pompeii: The Last Day, 140, 145 representational strategies, 14, 45, 95,
Poole, Lynn, 4, 6 100
popular beliefs, 56, 92, 131, 182, representational traditions, 18–19, 28,
185–6, 189–91 41, 44, 49, 52, 92, 185
popular culture, 12, 18–19, 28, Restless Earth Collection, 161
49–51, 59, 64, 67, 88–89, 92, rhetoric (of science), 189, 194–5
99, 112, 117, 125, 136, 158–9, Richard III: The King in the Car Park,
181, 185, 187, 197 132, 140, 150
Prehistoric, 102, 114, 117 Richard III: The Unseen Evidence, 140
Prehistoric Autopsy, 121, 149 risk society, 156, 159, 179
Prehistoric Megastorms, 165, 171 Roberts, Alice, 149
Prehistoric Park, 102, 118–19 Rome’s Great Battles, 140
pseudoarchaeology, 131, 152, 199 Rome’s Invisible City, 134–5
pseudoscience, 2, 21, 56, 89, 131, Rome’s Lost Empire, 134
186, 188–9, 191–4, 196–197, Rome: Total War, 144
199, 201, 205–8, 212 Rory McGrath’s Pub Dig, 129
Psychic Detective, The, 202–3 Ross, Rich, 1
Psychic Detectives, 201–2 Rotha, Paul, 4–5
psychic investigators, 202 Rough Science, 1
Public Broadcasting System (PBS), 7,
12
Pyramid, 137, 139–141, S
Sagan, Carl, 7, 11–14, 64, 83, 176,
187
Q Savage Planet, 161, 177, 180
quality television, 7, 34, 52, 100, science communication, 12, 17, 21,
190 188, 190–91
science fiction, 37, 48–49, 55, 63–64,
69–72, 77, 79, 81, 85, 91, 99,
R 198
Raging Planet, 161, 168, 175, 177, scientific processes, 80–81, 187, 206,
180 212
Raiders of the Lost Past, 131 Scrapheap Challenge (aka Junkyard
realism, 29, 45–47, 69, 101, 104, 137, Wards), 130
163 Sea Monsters, 101–2, 117
226 INDEX
Sean Bean on Waterloo, 146 Spielberg, Steven, 48, 69–70, 110,

Search for Extra Terrestrial 150
Intelligence Institute (SETI), Star Trek, 69
87–88 Star Trek: The Next Generation, 77
Search for the Lost Giants, 206–7 Star Wars, 69, 85
Secrets of Egypt, 129 Stephen Hawking and the Theory of
Secrets of Lost Empires, 129 Everything, 82
Secrets of Nature, 3 Stewart, Patrick, 53
Secrets of Quantum Physics, 82, 85 Stories from the Dark Earth: Meet the
Secrets of the Bible, 129, 131, 142 Ancestors Revisited, 149
Secrets of the Jesus Tomb (aka The Lost Stormchasers, 165–6, 172–3
Tomb of Jesus), 129 Storm City 3-D, 165
Secrets of the Stonehenge Skeletons, 149 Storm Riders, 165, 173
Secrets of the Terracotta Warriors, 129 Strip the Cosmos, 76, 87
Secrets of the Twelve Disciples, The, 129 subjunctive documentary, 18, 21,
Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the 36–38, 41, 47, 51, 59, 87, 92,
Cell, 55 131, 133–4, 141–2, 145, 152,
Sensing Murder, 202–205 178, 181, 189, 195, 199
Seven Wonders of the Industrial Age, 132 sublime
Sharif, Omar, 139 apocalyptic, 21, 54, 113, 119–20,
Sharpe, 146 143, 159, 178, 181, 187
Ship: Retracing Cook’s Endeavour astronomical, 19, 55
Voyage, The, 147 Burkean, 53–54, 148
Silent World, The, 5 dynamic, 20, 53, 67, 84, 144, 148,
Sky (network), 16, 96, 106 181
Sky at Night, The, 5, 64 mathematical, 54–55, 67, 80, 87,
Sobriety (documentary discourse of), 120
12, 28, 30, 33, 131, 159, 161 romantic, 67, 70–71, 74
Sopranos, The, 110 subjunctive, 19–20, 87, 151, 187
Space, 74, 79, 87, 89–90 technological, 19, 55–57, 59, 70,
outer, 5, 9, 14, 17, 19, 51–52, 55, 84–87, 187
64–65, 67–71, 73–77, 79–80, Super Comet: After the Impact, 161,
86–87, 91, 159, 165 165–8, 171–2, 175, 178, 180
sciences, 13, 19, 33, 45, 54–55, Superstorm, 161, 163, 165, 167, 172,
63–70, 73–74, 78, 80–89, 175
91–92, 95, 120, 148, 161–3, Supervolcano, 161, 163, 165, 172,
165–6, 176, 177, 187, 197, 199 178
race, 16, 56, 63–64, 66, 86, 187 Survival, 7
spectacle, 12, 18, 21, 34, 37, 49, Survivor, 10, 147
52–53, 58, 100, 112, 119–21, symbolic expositional (CGI style), 44,
126, 135–7, 159–61, 178, 181, 65, 79, 82, 103, 105, 132–5,
185, 187, 212 162, 165
INDEX 227
T U
Tennant, David, 55 UFO Hunters, 206–7
10,000 B.C., 147 Ufology/UFOs, 21, 79, 88–89, 91,
Through the Wormhole, 79, 83–84, 188, 193–5, 197–9, 206–7, 210
89–90, 92 Ultimate Disaster, 167, 171
Time-Life, 7 Uncovering Aliens, 206–7
Time Commanders, 144 Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, 5
Time Scanners, 135 Universe, The, 67, 71–73, 76–79, 82,
Time Team, 10, 127, 129, 132, 138, 84–86, 88, 90, 92, 142, 161
143, 149 Universe, The: Ancient Mysteries Solved,
Tomb Raider, 125 142
Tomorrow’s World, 7
Towering Inferno, The, 170
Trappings (of science), 21, 56, 84, V
182, 189, 193, 195, 197, 205–7, Valley of the T. Rex, 108
210, 212 verisimilitude, 42, 69, 101–2, 108,
Treasures Decoded, 128, 140 113, 118, 140, 163, 201
Treasure Hunters, 128 Virtual History: The Plot to Kill Hitler,
Treasures of Ancient Egypt, The, 128 11–12, 151
Treasures of Ancient Rome, The, 128 Visual effects, 1, 14, 19, 67–69, 74,
T.Rex Autopsy, 103 83, 86, 200,
tropes
narrative, 20, 196
representational, 42, 51, 195 W
visual, 14, 17, 20, 67, 74, 76, Waking the Baby Mammoth, 103, 108,
163 114
Tsoukalous, Giorgio, 198 Walking with Beasts, 107, 115, 120
Tutankhamun Murder Mystery, The, Walking with Cavemen, 121
(aka The Assassination of King Walking with Dinosaurs
Tut), 150 arena tour, 112
Tutankhamun: The Mystery of the film, 106, 112, 116, 118
Burnt Mummy, 150 TV series, 11, 17, 19, 43, 45–46,
Tutankhamun: The Mystery Revealed, 95–97, 99–101, 103–5,
150 110–11, 113, 116, 131
Tutankhamun: The Truth Uncovered, Walking with Monsters, 101, 116
151 War Game, The, 158
20th Century Battlefields, 133 War of the Worlds, 210
Two Men in a Trench, 129 Weather Channel, 160
2001: A Space Odyssey, 70, 79 Weather porn, 20, 158–61, 164, 169,
Twister, 172 176, 178–9, 181
Tyson, Neil DeGrasse, 12–14, 65, Welles, Orson, 210
75–77, 83, 187 What in the World?, 126
228 INDEX
What Killed the Mega-Beasts?, 115, Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice,
120 103, 108, 114
Wheeler, Mortimer, 4, 125 Woolly Mammoth: The Autopsy, 103,
When Dinosaurs Roamed America, 108, 111
102–3, 107, 110, 114, 116, World’s Wildest Police Videos, 9, 50
119 World’s Wildest Weather, The, 162
When Ghosts Attack, 199–200 World’s Worst Natural Disasters (aka
When the Levees Broke, 157–8, 173 Top Ten Natural Disasters), 162,
Who Killed Tutankhamun?, 150 165, 168, 171, 173, 175
wildlife films, 16, 33–35, 109
Wild New World, 114, 120
Wild Weather, 161, 165 X
Wire, The, 110 Xenoscience, 87
Wireframe (animation style), 44, 65,
95, 103, 106
Witness, 30, 163–4, 173 Y
Witness: Disaster in Japan, 163 Year the Earth Went Wild, The, 162
Witness: Katrina, 163, 173–4
Witness: Tornado Swarm 2011, 163
Wonders of the Solar System, 73–74, 77, Z
88, 90 Z-Cars, 110
Wonders of the Universe, 13, 69, Zodiac, 137
73–76 Zoo Quest, 5

Vincent Campbell (Auth.) - Science, Entertainment and Television Documentary (2016, Palgrave Macmillan UK) PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Vincent Campbell (Auth.) - Science, Entertainment and Television Documentary (2016, Palgrave Macmillan UK) PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Science, Entertainment and

ISBN 978-1-137-38537-6 ISBN 978-1-137-38538-3 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016935294

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

1 Introduction: The Changing Landscape of

2 Analytical Frameworks: Science, Documentary and Factual

3 Space Sciences: Wonders of the Cosmos 63

4 Palaeontology: Monsters from Lost Worlds 95

5 Archaeology: Ancient Secrets and Treasures 125

6 Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Extreme Weather

7 Pseudoscience and Popular Beliefs 185

Fig. 1.1 Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (Adrian Malone,

Introduction: The Changing Landscape

THE ‘ROTTING CARCASS OF SCIENCE TV’?

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo (2012–2014) was a controversial docu-soap

Further controversies have emerged surrounding archaeology pro-

documentaries not sufficiently signalled as such, notably the Animal Planet

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SCIENCE DOCUMENTARY

The historical development of science in film and television documentary

Johns Hopkins Science Review (1948–1995) (LaFollette 2013: 12). In

In Britain, science programming, particularly at the BBC, proved pivotal in

have other kinds of documentaries. A trace of this sentiment is even evi-

of factual entertainment television is dominated by ‘the notion of perfor-

Hitler (2004) which mixed archive footage with dramatised sequences

the cultural prominence of the presenters of factual series produced at

not an exclusive event television programme but a widely available, cross-

Fig. 1.1 Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (Adrian Malone, KCET/BBC, 1980)

THE AIMS AND STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

the UK/USA as well, though predominantly the versions considered are

on). Previous attempts to apply this approach to factual entertainment

television documentary have been remarkably consistent from the earliest

or Nature and the construction of disasters as a vicarious spectacle within

Beck, D., Hellmueller, L. C., & Aeschbacher, N. (2012). Factual entertainment

Nichols, B. (1991). Representing reality: Issues and concepts in documentary.

Analytical Frameworks: Science,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 27

techniques like CGI in documentary requires a rejection of pejorative

SCIENCE AND DOCUMENTARY: DISCOURSES OF SOBRIETY?

gradually began to shape scientific endeavours and processes, such as the

The authenticity of a documentary and the power of its claim to be such

Indexicality refers to ‘the way in which the appearance of an image is

This is an assumption, encouraged by specific properties of lenses, emul-

The challenge brought by CGI to this fundamental element of docu-

by a variety of techniques that have become conventions of documentary

The expository mode emphasizes the impression of objectivity and well-

That authoritative tone is evident in a variety of science documentaries

applied to in order to apprehend its true nature is fundamentally chal-

in general, offering sometimes excoriating critiques of wildlife films’ claims

By masking its political stakes, by diluting its environmentalist messages, the

The emphasis in such programmes, it has been argued, is less on pre-

provided by the programme, was a public service in itself’ (Wheatley

IMPOSSIBLE PICTURES: CGI AND SUBJUNCTIVE

The problem with CGI for many scholars in relation to documentary is in

Whereas most documentaries are concerned with documenting events that

These subjunctive documentaries are profoundly aggressive in their insis-

Metz’s excoriating critique lambasts the rise of subjunctive documentary

Marginally researched, fantastical interpretations of scientific ideas are pre-

Whilst including discussions of more conventional documentary, this book

of the use of animation in general and CGI in particular in the con-

Reflexive viewing position [which] is entirely typical of the audience’s nor-