Tag Archives: Steven Soter

Trailer for television programme Cosmos: A Space/Time Odyssey

Thanks to Michael Slezak and his Jan. 29, 2014 posting on tvline.com for this heads up about a new science-oriented, limited television series to be broadcast on US network television (Note: A link has been removed0.

Fox blinding you with science(-related) goodness?

That appears to be the goal of Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, a new 13-part series premiering Sunday, March 9 (9/8c) …

Here’s the promotional trailer released by Fox,

There’s more about the series from Fox Broadcasting Company’s Cosmos – A Spacetime Odyssey webpage,

More than three decades after the debut of “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage,” Carl Sagan’s stunning and iconic exploration of the universe as revealed by science, COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY sets off on a new voyage for the stars. Seth MacFarlane (FAMILY GUY, AMERICAN DAD) and Sagan’s original creative collaborators – writer/executive producer Ann Druyan and astronomer Steven Soter – have teamed to conceive a 13-part docu-series that will serve as a successor to the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning original series.

Hosted by renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the series will explore how we discovered the laws of nature and found our coordinates in space and time. It will bring to life never-before-told stories of the heroic quest for knowledge and transport viewers to new worlds and across the universe for a vision of the cosmos on the grandest scale. COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY will invent new modes of scientific storytelling [emphasis mine] to reveal the grandeur of the universe and re-invent celebrated elements of the legendary original series, including the Cosmic Calendar and the Ship of the Imagination. The most profound scientific concepts will be presented with stunning clarity, uniting skepticism and wonder, and weaving rigorous science with the emotional and spiritual into a transcendent experience.

Carl Sagan’s original series “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage” was first broadcast in 1980, and has been enjoyed by more than 750 million people worldwide.

So, they’re going to “invent new modes of scientific storytelling,” eh? That’s quite a goal and I wish them good luck with it even though they may well succeed without my good wishes. The producing team has certainly managed some major challenges to get this series produced and broadcast according to the Wikipedia Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey essay (Note: Links have been removed),

Following Sagan’s death in 1996, his widow Ann Druyan, the co-creator of the original Cosmos series along with Steven Soter, a producer from the series, and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, sought to create a new version of the series, aimed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and not just to those interested in the sciences. They had struggled for years with reluctant television networks that failed to see the broad appeal of the show.[6]

Seth MacFarlane had met Druyan through Tyson at the 2008 kickoff event for the Science & Entertainment Exchange, a new LA office of the National Academy of Sciences, designed to connect Hollywood writers and directors with scientists.[8] A year later, at a 2009 lunch in NYC with Tyson, MacFarlane learned of their interest to re-create Cosmos. He was influenced by Cosmos as a child, believing that Cosmos served to “[bridge] the gap between the academic community and the general public.”[8] …

In August 2011, the show was officially announced for primetime broadcast, and is scheduled for the spring of 2014. …

So, Tyson, Druyan, and Soter had worked for about nine years with no luck when Druyan met Seth MacFarlane with whose help the team managed to interest a network and where their work will be telecast some 15 years after they started. Bravo!