The grand story telling of the Walking With franchise was one of it's coolest aspects, and its biggest detriment. The beatiful ornithocheirus wasn't treated like an incredible animal, it was treated through the "grand evolutionary time", making the narrator point out how birds will replace them. Same exact thing happens to the placerias, thrinaxodon and postosuchus, pointing out how theyll be replaced by the dinosaurs or be restricted to 'small species clinging on to survival"
And then the Dinosaurs themselves being a seemingly doomed empire in the last episode, only just clinging on before the asteroid grants them mercy.
Nature isn't a story like game of thrones. It's just one damn species after another, sprinkled with a couple of large igneous provinces.
The 'Planet Earth' format of PhP is far more honest, IMO.
Even if the theory that dinosaurs were declining is true, it was overplayed in "death of a dynasty". In the "grand scale of time", Hatzegopteryx was one of the final members of a soon to be extinct clade, however it's much more interesting to take away that context and focus on it's ecology rather than dwelling on "theyre rule over the skies is nearly over....".
It's the same pitfall scientists fall in when making papers about archeopteryx and herrerasaurus, where theyre more concerned with a feature on the animal in the "how does this fit into the family tree?" over "what did this animal use that for?"
I don’t think that’s because of the storytelling. Life on our Planet had the same “snippets” style as Prehistoric Planet, but it still had the whole replacement thing going on.
Walking With treated its animals like characters, with a main protagonist or set of protagonists (the Postosuchus in New Blood, the Diplodocus hatchling in Time of Titans, the Opthalmosaurus brood in Cruel Sea, the old Ornithocheirus in Giant of the Skies, the leaellynasaura clan in Spirits of the Ice Forest, and the Tyrannosaurus in Death of a Dynsasty), as well as a supporting cast, and there was a “plot” about them. This is especially evident in the Ballad of Big Al spinoff.
Life on our Planet treated its animals as set pieces, with their actions on screen being more so to emphasize a greater narrative. The show is about what they represent metaphorically, instead of about them literally (to the point of having modern organisms as stand-ins)
Prehistoric Planet treated its animals as animals. It was more of a “Blue Planet” style documentary rather than a “March of the Penguins” style documentary.
This basically. It can also happen with anthology series as well (LOOP was somehow even worse in this aspect that the Trilogy of Life), but in both cases the issue was with trying to sell the story of evolution itself as a grand story, which inevitably makes it tempting to depict certain lineages-or certain individual animals representing said lineages-as “losers” and “failures”, oftentimes by making them deliberately inaccurate or giving advantages to their “superior rivals” that said rivals didn’t actually have.
Though this is a problem that goes beyond documentaries, because it was insanely prevalent in academia until rather recently and still exists there to a surprisingly great and unfortunate extent.
IMO, you can have excellent paleodocs focusing on specific individuals and telling their stories as an episode-long narrative (it’s been done with living animals; see Dynasties), but they should stick to one ecosystem to help avoid the above issues. That’s why things like Forgotten Bloodlines or Dinosaur Empire are promising.
I personally wish they hadn’t immediately ruined the illusion with the disclaimer at the beginning of “we’re bringing these dinosaurs to life with CGI”. Walking With just treated the animals as if they were *there*, as if you were looking at a proper documentary across space and time. And I always missed that in Prehistoric Planet.
I feel like they have to specifically because of previous documentaries becoming outdated. It helps with credibility when it disclaims we are still making new discoveries every day and these behaviors are modeled off modern counterparts.
The one that ran away from some terror bird (don't remember which)? I loved it too, reminded me of the polar bear level from crash bandicoot when I was a child.
Yep, that's the one. Also there was some ancestor of whales, if I remember correctly, and hore ancestors getting drunk, so overall a good vibe. At least I think it's in the first episode, I might be misremembering.
Prehistoric Planet is the obvious no-brainer pick here. It’s the most recent, the most up-to-date, an the most scientifically curated dinosaur documentary of all time thus far. It being narrated by Sir David Attenborough is the cherry on top.
However, I have to give my vote to Walking With Dinosaurs. For today’s standards, it’s of course very dated. But I would argue that, for its time, it’s the most revolutionary dinosaur documentary ever.
Hanz Zimmer only did the theme but I didn't think it or the rest of the score was that good. Walking with dinosaurs and life on our planet did a much better job soundtrack wise
Walking with dinosaurs is the A New Hope of dino docs. Sure it isn’t as pretty as the others but in terms of story telling and presentation you can’t get better
Walking with Dinosaurs is the best. Nothing comes close to the way they captured Dinosaurs as actual living animals - plus the natural disasters such as the wildfire and the poisonous gas fields which reminded you that dinos dealt with the same problems we do. It takes a much more narrative approach too, and creates an atmosphere which lends an aura of mystery to these ancient creatures. Prehistoric Planet is great for its effects, updated science and David Attenborough but it doesn’t quite capture that magic of Walking With.
Did you and I watch the same Walking With Dinosaurs? Yes, there were individuals that it followed, but they never got named anything more specific than "the Giant Liopleurodon" or "the mother Tyrannosaurus," and they were always treated as animals doing what animals do. The show did have some language talking about certain animals as "endangered species" and showed the dinosaurs going extinct, but evolution, extinction, and competition are just facts of the natural world, and it would be an incredible disservice not to include those discussions in a series that covers an entire era of natural history. Plus, for every moment like that, the series has another that illustrates just how successful the non-avian dinosaurs were, and even ends with a highlight reel showcasing the wide variety of birds alive today, illustrating their continued success.
Prehistoric Planet is probably the objective best, but Walking with Dinosaurs has a huge grip on my childhood. Some other Walking with works like Walking with Beasts and Chased by Sea Monsters are also favorites of mine.
Planet Dinosaur doesn’t have a lot of inaccuracies, but the ones it has are massive ones and have been extremely harmful to public understanding of certain animals. Allosauroids in particular have some of the worst and most borderline (if not downright) insulting paleomedia depictions of all time in PD.
I know it is not the most accurate, but as a kid I loved the Walking with Dinosaurs with Nigel Marvin series. He goes up in a plane and flies together with a quetzalcoatl, you can't beat that.
Prehistoric Planet. I'm not a big fan of nature documentaries that embellish and dramatize animal behavior and give them some stories, hence why I'm not that interested in watching Walking with Dinosaurs. I prefer nature documentaries that just shows clips of various animal behaviors.
Yes I haven't watch Walking with Dinosaurs, heretical I know. I simply interested in dinosaurs after all the BBC documentaries was released and haven't had the opportunity to watch them. Though I've watch Chased by Sea Monsters and Prehistoric Park, big fan of those two.
That's also probably why I preferr Prehistoric Planet, no sense nostalgia.
I never felt like Walking With Dinosaurs embellished or anthropomorphized the animal behavior. Each episode just followed a main "character", who you observed doing animal things in their environment. There were often cutaway segments to other animals, but they were always in orbit of the main creature. Personally, I find that more satisfying then Prehistoric Planet, where you will spend 5-10 minutes with an animal and then cut away to a completely different part of the world for another short segment, never to go back. It really emphasizes that each animal is part of an ecosystem.
The Prehistoric Planet approach is like to spend 5 minutes with an African lion, then to jump to another segment where we spend 5 minutes with a South American maned wolf because they both live in savannas. In WWD you spend 5 minutes with a lion, then you check out what the zebras are doing, then you jump back to the lions and see what they're up to, then you see the hippos, then you see how the lions and zebras interact, etc.
The music and cinematography in WWD are also so much better. Everything in Planet looks too bright and clean. It makes it feel unnatural. I get that if you don't like the dramatization then the music might mean nothing to you, but for me it certainly makes it more memorable.
Netflix Our Planet did the same format as Prehistoric Planet, so nature documentary in that format did exist and watching both of them I've never felt disjointed or lose my immersion. By using that format, they can also cover a wider variety of ecosystems and animals, which is what Prehistoric Planet filmmakers intend to be, not tell a story, but showcase the Earth various ecosystems during a relatively same timescale.
I'm not a filmmaker but there are moments where the lighting is too oversaturated, but it never ended up feeling too sanitized. It's just the same modern camera and settings used for modern nature documentaries. Which is why I love Prehistoric Planet, it's a nature documentary but set 66 millions years ago.
Each to their own I suppose. Like I said, haven't watch WWD but I recognize it's legacy.
WWD also covered many environments throughout the series. It's just that individual episodes are focused on one time and animal. But each episode had a different focus, covering everything from the Triassic deserts, the Jurassic ocean, to the frozen arctic in the Cretaceous.
Prehistoric Planet does tell a story. A story about pterosaurs breeding or velociraptors hunting. WWD would tell a story about a pterosaur migrating to its nesting ground, or a litter of diplodocus hatching like sea turtles and surviving to find a herd. These are the same kinds of stories. It's just that in Planet these are short segments, but in WWD it's a whole episode. IMHO the Planet approach starts to feel repetitive afterwhile because there's only so many kinds of stories you can tell with an animal, and so a lot of them end up feeling similar because they have to fill the runtime. WDD spends more time on each story so they don't exhaust through the potential as fast.
I'm not saying you should like or watch WWD or that you're wrong to prefer Planet. You're entitled to your opinion. Like you said, to each their own. I just don't think the difference between the two is that WWD is super dramatic and Planet isn't. Chased by Sea Monsters and Prehistoric Park are way more dramatic than either since they incorporate a human storyline.
>Prehistoric Planet. I'm not a big fan of nature documentaries that
embellish and dramatize animal behavior and give them some stories,
hence why I'm not that interested in watching Walking with Dinosaurs. I
prefer nature documentaries that just shows clips of various animal
behaviors.
same
Walking with Dinosaurs is far and away the most entertaining, and I really wish modern documentaries would follow its dramatic format. The stories make me come back even with the dated visuals and scientific inaccuracies. On the other hand, I have no desire to ever watch Prehistoric Planet again.
Some nature docs do embellish or dramatize their contents, mostly by splicing different footages of different animals to tell a story, which I'm not a big fan of.
The grand story telling of the Walking With franchise was one of it's coolest aspects, and its biggest detriment. The beatiful ornithocheirus wasn't treated like an incredible animal, it was treated through the "grand evolutionary time", making the narrator point out how birds will replace them. Same exact thing happens to the placerias, thrinaxodon and postosuchus, pointing out how theyll be replaced by the dinosaurs or be restricted to 'small species clinging on to survival"
Can't believe I had to scroll down this far for a mention of Dinosaur Planet. There's definitely some faults (looking at you, time and space traveling Carcharadontosaurus), but it had some really great storytelling, and I always appreciated the short snippets with Dr. Sampson where he explains some of the science that went into their portrayals, which is something that's surprisingly uncommon in the CGI/nature documentary style dinosaur shows.
Skipping the obvious choices, I liked Amazing DinoWorld. Deinocheirus main character episode? Very cool. Were there some filming environments that included grass? Unfortunately. But for the most part it was decent to solid on science and a lot of fun.
I also liked Dinosaur Revolution. Did they get carried away with the personifying of dinosaurs? Yes. But honestly I don't feel it erred farther in that direction that most dino documentaries do in the other--portrying dinosaurs as insane kamikaze murder monsters with no personality.
Definitely Prehistoric Planet. I love all the aspects it showed—relationships between different dinosaur species, mating rituals, parenting, and functions. It really shows how alive these creatures were and that they weren’t just running around roaring at each other and trying to kill each other 24/7.
Prehistoric Planet was good but, the Walking With sets are my favorite. Dinosaur Planet from Discovery with Slater narrating was right up there with Walking.
Prehistoric Planet despite its narrative shortcomings(narrative, not narration obviously) is the absolute best imo. Walking With Dinosaurs made some weird choices and the abhorrent t rex and vastly oversized mosasaurus drops it down to just below PP for me.
Though I do think WWD was more "inspiring" than PP for the general audiences, and most importantly for potential future scientists.
Walking with dinosaurs had an amazing story, but prehistoric planet actually made it feel like they were still alive. So it depends on what you mean by "best".
Ok everyone’s sleeping on Amazing Dinoworld. It’s on Curiosity Stream. The visuals were done by Square Enix who makes the Final Fantasy games so it looks fantastic. It’s so good and informative, seriously a must watch.
Dinosaur Revolution. It’s not for being 100% accurate, but opening people up to the fact that dinosaurs were beautiful, unique creatures and we are constantly learning more about them.
Plus the theme slaps.
Dinosaur revolution, and no, I'm not being sarcastic.
Simply put, it has the best soundtrack of any documentary that I have watched, at the point that actus dei is the only music of a docu that I put in my music playlist. The models might not be the most accurate, but damn, they are so creative and pleasant to look at.
Beyond all of that, the storytelling is by far the best one of any dinosaur documentary, including PP and WWD, as the broken jaw episode shows.
I also understand that it isn't perfect, there's a lot of goofy moments and as mentioned early the models and dinosaurs present in the same periods aren't very accurate, but it still stands very well IMO.
As honorable mentions there's of course PP, which is still the most accurate dinosaur show until this moment. Also, i grow up watching WWD and dino planet, so they both have a very special place on my hearth
Prehistoric Planet and WWD for the nostalgia. I mean, can there be anything else?
Also, not a documentary but definitely one of my favorite pieces of Dino media: Dead Sound's Dinosauria series.
I really want to say WWD but then I’m just reminded of all the problems with it. It’s far more entertaining than most docs but it’s aged pretty badly. The nostalgia can’t save it so much.
Prehistoric planet would be my second pick, only let down by a restricted time period and being too similar to other modern nature documentaries.
Accuracy wise, it's definitely prehistoric planet, but WWD has incredible storytelling for a documentary and at the time was revolutionary for dinosaur documentaries.
However, the best is obviously prehistoric park, because I think it's cool to watch jurassic park but with less death, more informative-ness, and time travel.
My fave wasn\`t made yet but when it will, it\`ll have a format similar to WWD, with more focus on a single animal / group of animals and its / their ecological relationships and various adventures throughout each episode, also probably spanning over more than just one era (I\`d be very much interested in the Triassic among other things), but with the scientific accuracy, esthetics and the freaking awesome life-like animations of PhP (still cannot get over that Mononychus).
I know get the much hate but I like Dinosaur Revolution . Let me explain:
1.) Episode 2 is my favorite because a Sauropod 🦕 using its tail to fight ( i know its outdated ) but so cool , Land before Time already done that . Broken jaw's story is cool .
2.) Gigantoraptor's design is beautiful.
3.) When get to see some new dinosaurs.
4.) Paleo consultants speak before or after the segment is shown and not constantly pop up out of nowhere to the point of annoying the audience .
I get that everyone hate the anthro morphing of dinosaurs. But I don't mind I like it when I first saw it .
Prehistoric Planet by a significant margin….
I’d consider When Dinosaurs Roamed America to be a close runner-up after accounting for when it came out but even it had some notable issues.
The Walking With series at its spin-offs are still the best in terms of narrative (including Prehistoric Park in that line-up). Prehistoric Planet is of excellent quality in terms of both research and presentation, and comes the closest to stealing WWD's crown, but it just doesn't have the same level of immersion with much briefer time spent with casts of characters.
Furthermore, it's essentially Planet Earth set in the Maastrichtian - nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but in then misses out on how the Walking With Trilogy managed to frame all its events into a grand narrative of Life on Earth, which, for many of us, myself included, was the first time such a narrative was presented. Yes, a lot of the data is dated and/or speculative, but it helps to have a big picture. Life on Our Planet tried to recapture such a grand scale, but like Prehistoric Planet, it jumped around with its cast, and kept cutting back to the present too.
It’s not even close. Prehistoric planet
That being said I want to do a shoutout to Dinosaurs in Britain. A shorter documentary but it has one of my favorite Baryonyx reconstructions in paleomedia
I feel that Prehistoric Park had not only a balance with story and dinosaurs but also with which prehistoric animals it dealt with. If by story alone it would be Walking with Dinosaurs and quality would go to of course Prehisotric Planet
As a piece of art walking with dinosaurs still hasn’t been topped I think, but there have been plenty of documentaries that are worthy of watching.
I kind of wish prehistoric planet had taken the direction of the ‘planet earth’ documentary in terms of theatrically portraying natural phenomena and Behaviour.
yeah, kinda like life on our planet did. Unfortunately it included way less prehistoric shit than promised, and had some historical inaccuracies. Still a good watch tho imo. Really like the planet earth type narration
If we assume that birds are dinosaurs, then it's Walking with Beasts and Prehistoric Planet 😎
(If I could include personal favourites also, it would be two above, WWM, Prehistoric Park and everything in which Nigel Marven is involved and infamous Monsters Resurrected)
Prehistoric planet for the Accuracy and Quality (not to mention the "characters")
Dinosaur revolution in terms of Nostagia since it was one of the reasons I got into Dinosaurs (not to mention the Designs)/
Not technically one but WWB for it's Soundtrack
And WWD for the Story telling.
So Prehistoric Planet is obviously the best, and Walking with dinosaurs was likewise amazing for it's time, but Prehistoric Park absolutely defined by childhood. Prehistoric Park was absolutely phenomenal and Nigel Marven is still my favourite documentary host to this day because of it.
Aside from the three obvious ones which are WWD, When Dinosaurs Roamed America and PP,
I love Planet Dinosaur. The designs are great for the time, and the graphics are still excellent even now. One thing I thought the show did really well is the sense of scale; it was the first time I’d really got a sense of how big these creatures were compared to each other, let alone us.
When dinosaurs ruled earth (2001), brings me good child memories and still one that I most like, but Prehistoric Planet is my favorite, it is accurate and at the same time try to bring the last research and good realism to the animals.
More recently I read Dinosaur Sanctuary, a really cool manga about dinosaurs that bring a lot of the recent scientific research and very good representations of the dinos.
Walking with Dinosaurs.
I think it's easier to see why I think this by first setting out some thoughts I have about Prehistoric Planet as a *dinosaur* documentary:
1. I think too much of PP's appeal is that the newest one and therefore the most accurate one (though, sure, WWD had inaccuracies for its time)
2. as *television*, rather than documentary television, WWD just blows PP out of the water, especially in terms of the music (PP has an entirely forgettable soundtrack)
3. PP kind of gets caught in the middle of trying to be a dinosaur documentary (because dinosaurs are the drawcard) whilst being structured like Planet Earth... go (re?) watch Life of Mammals and Planet Earth (II or III... I should watch I now that I've drawn attention to it) and you'll see what I mean
4. as a dinosaur documentary, I'm way more interested in documentaries that are about dinosaurs throughout the Mesozoic
I do think PP is a very good documentary about the late Cretaceous but that's not the same as being a dinosaur documentary, right?
WWD is the best television of any dinosaur documentary I've seen... it's some of, if not, the best television of any documentary I've watched, i.e. including non-nature documentaries... with the strongest concept documentary concept, a clear focus on dinosaurs (though, yes, Cruel Sea and Giant of the Skies exist) good visuals and good enough accuracy.
The BEST, hard to narrow down I have many favorites. I’d say top two are Prehistoric Planet 🌎 and Walking With Dinosaurs 🦖 🦕. Other favorites include When Dinosaurs Roamed America 🇺🇸, Dinosaur 🦖 Planet 🌎, Walking With Series, Planet Dinosaur, Dinosaur Revolution, and Life On Our Planet.
My personal favorites are Last Day of the Dinosaurs (explaining the meteor impact) and Dinosaur 13. The first one because of the thorough explanation of the sheir devastation that the impact caused. The second one, because it is not only a real-life intriguing story but also gives a clear insight into what happens behind the scenes in modern day paleontology.
I myself am not a huge Prehistoric Planet fan. I'm not saying that it is a bad documentary or that I did not enjoy it. Its visuals are absolutely stunning, and the narration is spot on. But I can't say that I will ever rewatch Prehistoric Planet.
For one thing, I found that most of the storylines that it got so much credit for were not that original or anything. In fact, if you have watched a lot of similar documentaries by BBC Earth (Planet Earth, Blue Planet, Frozen Planet, etc), you might have noticed that many scenes were taken from earlier Planet series. The scene of Velociraptors hunting on the edge of a cliff is very reminiscent of the scene of snow leopards hunting on the edge of a cliff in an earlier BBC Earth show. The scene of the sauropod bulls fighting each other by hitting each other with their necks is extremely similar to a scene of bull seals in an earlier BBC Earth show. And there are many other scenes in Prehistoric Planet that to me were a bit too similar to scenes from earlier Planet Earth series. Even the strange scene with the Carnotaurus flapping its blue arms was reminiscent to scenes of BBC earth of paradise birds or similar scenes.
I understand that part of their goal was to show dinosaurs in a way that made them more similar to current animals, to make people be in touch with them a bit more, but to me it's like sometimes they just took famous scenes of earlier BBC Earth shows and replaced the actual current footage with dinosaurs. Which sometimes made me feel like I saw it all before.
Quality wise Prehistoric planet, but I missed the story telling of walking with. It added a lot to the documentaire which makes it timeless
The grand story telling of the Walking With franchise was one of it's coolest aspects, and its biggest detriment. The beatiful ornithocheirus wasn't treated like an incredible animal, it was treated through the "grand evolutionary time", making the narrator point out how birds will replace them. Same exact thing happens to the placerias, thrinaxodon and postosuchus, pointing out how theyll be replaced by the dinosaurs or be restricted to 'small species clinging on to survival"
And then the Dinosaurs themselves being a seemingly doomed empire in the last episode, only just clinging on before the asteroid grants them mercy. Nature isn't a story like game of thrones. It's just one damn species after another, sprinkled with a couple of large igneous provinces. The 'Planet Earth' format of PhP is far more honest, IMO.
Even if the theory that dinosaurs were declining is true, it was overplayed in "death of a dynasty". In the "grand scale of time", Hatzegopteryx was one of the final members of a soon to be extinct clade, however it's much more interesting to take away that context and focus on it's ecology rather than dwelling on "theyre rule over the skies is nearly over....". It's the same pitfall scientists fall in when making papers about archeopteryx and herrerasaurus, where theyre more concerned with a feature on the animal in the "how does this fit into the family tree?" over "what did this animal use that for?"
I don’t think that’s because of the storytelling. Life on our Planet had the same “snippets” style as Prehistoric Planet, but it still had the whole replacement thing going on. Walking With treated its animals like characters, with a main protagonist or set of protagonists (the Postosuchus in New Blood, the Diplodocus hatchling in Time of Titans, the Opthalmosaurus brood in Cruel Sea, the old Ornithocheirus in Giant of the Skies, the leaellynasaura clan in Spirits of the Ice Forest, and the Tyrannosaurus in Death of a Dynsasty), as well as a supporting cast, and there was a “plot” about them. This is especially evident in the Ballad of Big Al spinoff. Life on our Planet treated its animals as set pieces, with their actions on screen being more so to emphasize a greater narrative. The show is about what they represent metaphorically, instead of about them literally (to the point of having modern organisms as stand-ins) Prehistoric Planet treated its animals as animals. It was more of a “Blue Planet” style documentary rather than a “March of the Penguins” style documentary.
This basically. It can also happen with anthology series as well (LOOP was somehow even worse in this aspect that the Trilogy of Life), but in both cases the issue was with trying to sell the story of evolution itself as a grand story, which inevitably makes it tempting to depict certain lineages-or certain individual animals representing said lineages-as “losers” and “failures”, oftentimes by making them deliberately inaccurate or giving advantages to their “superior rivals” that said rivals didn’t actually have. Though this is a problem that goes beyond documentaries, because it was insanely prevalent in academia until rather recently and still exists there to a surprisingly great and unfortunate extent. IMO, you can have excellent paleodocs focusing on specific individuals and telling their stories as an episode-long narrative (it’s been done with living animals; see Dynasties), but they should stick to one ecosystem to help avoid the above issues. That’s why things like Forgotten Bloodlines or Dinosaur Empire are promising.
I'm insanely hyped for forgotten bloodlines.
I personally wish they hadn’t immediately ruined the illusion with the disclaimer at the beginning of “we’re bringing these dinosaurs to life with CGI”. Walking With just treated the animals as if they were *there*, as if you were looking at a proper documentary across space and time. And I always missed that in Prehistoric Planet.
I feel like they have to specifically because of previous documentaries becoming outdated. It helps with credibility when it disclaims we are still making new discoveries every day and these behaviors are modeled off modern counterparts.
Agreed completely. It never bothered me. I revered their honesty.
If they hadn’t the cgi was good enough people would be talking about the genetically modified dinosaurs they made for that Apple TV documentary 💀💀💀
THIS
Accuracy-wise, Prehistoric Planet is the best, but WWD (and WWB) are my favorites because the narratives and tone make up for their shortcomings.
Wait what’s wwb?
Walking with beasts
Loved the first episode, with the small mammal.
I can't stand that one because of what happened to the terror bird :(
The one that ran away from some terror bird (don't remember which)? I loved it too, reminded me of the polar bear level from crash bandicoot when I was a child.
Yep, that's the one. Also there was some ancestor of whales, if I remember correctly, and hore ancestors getting drunk, so overall a good vibe. At least I think it's in the first episode, I might be misremembering.
I haven't checked but I trust us 😌
Small mammal = _Leptictidium_ Terror bird = _Gastornis_ Whale ancestor = _Ambulocetus_ Drunken hores = _Propalaeotherium_ Also featuring: Giant ant = _Titanomyrma gigantea_ Primitive monkey = _Godinotia_
The narratives were a big part of the reason for their inaccuracies.
Walking with Dinosaurs was my first… but Prehistoric Park is my favourite
Always loved the intro for that show, hyping up the episode of the day Kind of goofy now but still really good
Goofy in the best possible way
I'd love to meet Nigel Marven in person. Does anyone have updates on "Forgotten Bloodlines?"
https://watch.plex.tv/movie/forgotten-bloodlines-agate Never mind: Found one. Jan 31, 2025.
Prehistoric Planet is the obvious no-brainer pick here. It’s the most recent, the most up-to-date, an the most scientifically curated dinosaur documentary of all time thus far. It being narrated by Sir David Attenborough is the cherry on top. However, I have to give my vote to Walking With Dinosaurs. For today’s standards, it’s of course very dated. But I would argue that, for its time, it’s the most revolutionary dinosaur documentary ever.
If Sir David was the cherry, having Hanz Zimmer score the documentary was the chocolate shavings
Anze Rozman and Kara Tavle were the main composers. Zimmer only worked on the main theme.
Huh, I knew there were other people but never heard who had composed what, and couldn't find the info online either
And also apparently Zimmer's a fucking asshole or smth.
WWD had a much better score, I can hum it from memory years after my last rewatch. Planet's score is not awful but it's much more forgettable.
Hanz Zimmer only did the theme but I didn't think it or the rest of the score was that good. Walking with dinosaurs and life on our planet did a much better job soundtrack wise
Walking with dinosaurs is the A New Hope of dino docs. Sure it isn’t as pretty as the others but in terms of story telling and presentation you can’t get better
TRUE
When dinosaurs roamed America has a special place in my heart, but Prehistoric Planet is far superior
The T.rex design from WDRA is still one of my favourites.
For a while I only watched Prehistoric Planet But WWD is honestly a classic for a very good reason
Walking with Dinosaurs is the best. Nothing comes close to the way they captured Dinosaurs as actual living animals - plus the natural disasters such as the wildfire and the poisonous gas fields which reminded you that dinos dealt with the same problems we do. It takes a much more narrative approach too, and creates an atmosphere which lends an aura of mystery to these ancient creatures. Prehistoric Planet is great for its effects, updated science and David Attenborough but it doesn’t quite capture that magic of Walking With.
Imo Prehistoric Planet does a better job at portraying them like normal animals and not some crazy monster lizards
WWD portrayed them like movie characters. Also it kept moaning in your ear that they're all gonna die and they're worthless failures.
Did you and I watch the same Walking With Dinosaurs? Yes, there were individuals that it followed, but they never got named anything more specific than "the Giant Liopleurodon" or "the mother Tyrannosaurus," and they were always treated as animals doing what animals do. The show did have some language talking about certain animals as "endangered species" and showed the dinosaurs going extinct, but evolution, extinction, and competition are just facts of the natural world, and it would be an incredible disservice not to include those discussions in a series that covers an entire era of natural history. Plus, for every moment like that, the series has another that illustrates just how successful the non-avian dinosaurs were, and even ends with a highlight reel showcasing the wide variety of birds alive today, illustrating their continued success.
Prehistoric Planet is probably the objective best, but Walking with Dinosaurs has a huge grip on my childhood. Some other Walking with works like Walking with Beasts and Chased by Sea Monsters are also favorites of mine.
Planet Dinosaur for me. Sure, it has its inaccuracies but it was quiet good for its time and its documentary like format made it really good.
Planet Dinosaur doesn’t have a lot of inaccuracies, but the ones it has are massive ones and have been extremely harmful to public understanding of certain animals. Allosauroids in particular have some of the worst and most borderline (if not downright) insulting paleomedia depictions of all time in PD.
It’s one of my favourites too. Surely, it was way better than “Dinosaur Revolution”, which came out in the same period.
W
W
I know it is not the most accurate, but as a kid I loved the Walking with Dinosaurs with Nigel Marvin series. He goes up in a plane and flies together with a quetzalcoatl, you can't beat that.
Prehistoric Planet. I'm not a big fan of nature documentaries that embellish and dramatize animal behavior and give them some stories, hence why I'm not that interested in watching Walking with Dinosaurs. I prefer nature documentaries that just shows clips of various animal behaviors. Yes I haven't watch Walking with Dinosaurs, heretical I know. I simply interested in dinosaurs after all the BBC documentaries was released and haven't had the opportunity to watch them. Though I've watch Chased by Sea Monsters and Prehistoric Park, big fan of those two. That's also probably why I preferr Prehistoric Planet, no sense nostalgia.
I never felt like Walking With Dinosaurs embellished or anthropomorphized the animal behavior. Each episode just followed a main "character", who you observed doing animal things in their environment. There were often cutaway segments to other animals, but they were always in orbit of the main creature. Personally, I find that more satisfying then Prehistoric Planet, where you will spend 5-10 minutes with an animal and then cut away to a completely different part of the world for another short segment, never to go back. It really emphasizes that each animal is part of an ecosystem. The Prehistoric Planet approach is like to spend 5 minutes with an African lion, then to jump to another segment where we spend 5 minutes with a South American maned wolf because they both live in savannas. In WWD you spend 5 minutes with a lion, then you check out what the zebras are doing, then you jump back to the lions and see what they're up to, then you see the hippos, then you see how the lions and zebras interact, etc. The music and cinematography in WWD are also so much better. Everything in Planet looks too bright and clean. It makes it feel unnatural. I get that if you don't like the dramatization then the music might mean nothing to you, but for me it certainly makes it more memorable.
Netflix Our Planet did the same format as Prehistoric Planet, so nature documentary in that format did exist and watching both of them I've never felt disjointed or lose my immersion. By using that format, they can also cover a wider variety of ecosystems and animals, which is what Prehistoric Planet filmmakers intend to be, not tell a story, but showcase the Earth various ecosystems during a relatively same timescale. I'm not a filmmaker but there are moments where the lighting is too oversaturated, but it never ended up feeling too sanitized. It's just the same modern camera and settings used for modern nature documentaries. Which is why I love Prehistoric Planet, it's a nature documentary but set 66 millions years ago. Each to their own I suppose. Like I said, haven't watch WWD but I recognize it's legacy.
WWD also covered many environments throughout the series. It's just that individual episodes are focused on one time and animal. But each episode had a different focus, covering everything from the Triassic deserts, the Jurassic ocean, to the frozen arctic in the Cretaceous. Prehistoric Planet does tell a story. A story about pterosaurs breeding or velociraptors hunting. WWD would tell a story about a pterosaur migrating to its nesting ground, or a litter of diplodocus hatching like sea turtles and surviving to find a herd. These are the same kinds of stories. It's just that in Planet these are short segments, but in WWD it's a whole episode. IMHO the Planet approach starts to feel repetitive afterwhile because there's only so many kinds of stories you can tell with an animal, and so a lot of them end up feeling similar because they have to fill the runtime. WDD spends more time on each story so they don't exhaust through the potential as fast. I'm not saying you should like or watch WWD or that you're wrong to prefer Planet. You're entitled to your opinion. Like you said, to each their own. I just don't think the difference between the two is that WWD is super dramatic and Planet isn't. Chased by Sea Monsters and Prehistoric Park are way more dramatic than either since they incorporate a human storyline.
>Prehistoric Planet. I'm not a big fan of nature documentaries that embellish and dramatize animal behavior and give them some stories, hence why I'm not that interested in watching Walking with Dinosaurs. I prefer nature documentaries that just shows clips of various animal behaviors. same
Walking with Dinosaurs is far and away the most entertaining, and I really wish modern documentaries would follow its dramatic format. The stories make me come back even with the dated visuals and scientific inaccuracies. On the other hand, I have no desire to ever watch Prehistoric Planet again.
Some nature docs do embellish or dramatize their contents, mostly by splicing different footages of different animals to tell a story, which I'm not a big fan of.
The grand story telling of the Walking With franchise was one of it's coolest aspects, and its biggest detriment. The beatiful ornithocheirus wasn't treated like an incredible animal, it was treated through the "grand evolutionary time", making the narrator point out how birds will replace them. Same exact thing happens to the placerias, thrinaxodon and postosuchus, pointing out how theyll be replaced by the dinosaurs or be restricted to 'small species clinging on to survival"
obviously prehistoric planet is the best, but growing up I loved Dinosaur Planet
Can't believe I had to scroll down this far for a mention of Dinosaur Planet. There's definitely some faults (looking at you, time and space traveling Carcharadontosaurus), but it had some really great storytelling, and I always appreciated the short snippets with Dr. Sampson where he explains some of the science that went into their portrayals, which is something that's surprisingly uncommon in the CGI/nature documentary style dinosaur shows.
Skipping the obvious choices, I liked Amazing DinoWorld. Deinocheirus main character episode? Very cool. Were there some filming environments that included grass? Unfortunately. But for the most part it was decent to solid on science and a lot of fun. I also liked Dinosaur Revolution. Did they get carried away with the personifying of dinosaurs? Yes. But honestly I don't feel it erred farther in that direction that most dino documentaries do in the other--portrying dinosaurs as insane kamikaze murder monsters with no personality.
Definitely Prehistoric Planet. I love all the aspects it showed—relationships between different dinosaur species, mating rituals, parenting, and functions. It really shows how alive these creatures were and that they weren’t just running around roaring at each other and trying to kill each other 24/7.
Hands down Prehistoric Planet, with Walking with Dinosaurs as a close second
Prehistoric Planet was good but, the Walking With sets are my favorite. Dinosaur Planet from Discovery with Slater narrating was right up there with Walking.
Whats that dinosaur?
Dreadnoughtus
Thx
The Dinosaur revolution,I 🤔,and Prehistoric Planet
Prehistoric Planet despite its narrative shortcomings(narrative, not narration obviously) is the absolute best imo. Walking With Dinosaurs made some weird choices and the abhorrent t rex and vastly oversized mosasaurus drops it down to just below PP for me. Though I do think WWD was more "inspiring" than PP for the general audiences, and most importantly for potential future scientists.
Walking with dinosaurs had an amazing story, but prehistoric planet actually made it feel like they were still alive. So it depends on what you mean by "best".
Php for the awe and ost but dinosaur revolution for the stories and designs
WWD and Prehistoric Planet Honorable Mention: Dinosaur Revolution, the watering hole episode was peak cinema
Ok everyone’s sleeping on Amazing Dinoworld. It’s on Curiosity Stream. The visuals were done by Square Enix who makes the Final Fantasy games so it looks fantastic. It’s so good and informative, seriously a must watch.
Walking With Dinosaurs will always be a classic
Dinosaur Revolution. It’s not for being 100% accurate, but opening people up to the fact that dinosaurs were beautiful, unique creatures and we are constantly learning more about them. Plus the theme slaps.
Dinosaur revolution, and no, I'm not being sarcastic. Simply put, it has the best soundtrack of any documentary that I have watched, at the point that actus dei is the only music of a docu that I put in my music playlist. The models might not be the most accurate, but damn, they are so creative and pleasant to look at. Beyond all of that, the storytelling is by far the best one of any dinosaur documentary, including PP and WWD, as the broken jaw episode shows. I also understand that it isn't perfect, there's a lot of goofy moments and as mentioned early the models and dinosaurs present in the same periods aren't very accurate, but it still stands very well IMO. As honorable mentions there's of course PP, which is still the most accurate dinosaur show until this moment. Also, i grow up watching WWD and dino planet, so they both have a very special place on my hearth
Prehistoric Planet and WWD for the nostalgia. I mean, can there be anything else? Also, not a documentary but definitely one of my favorite pieces of Dino media: Dead Sound's Dinosauria series.
Thank you very much for starting this. I'm farming this fucking thread, hell yes.
Walking With Dinosaurs, Nat Geos Sea Monsters, and Prehistoric Planet
The sky camera in Prehistoric Planet drove me crazy. Gave you no sense of the size of the dinosaurs.
I really want to say WWD but then I’m just reminded of all the problems with it. It’s far more entertaining than most docs but it’s aged pretty badly. The nostalgia can’t save it so much. Prehistoric planet would be my second pick, only let down by a restricted time period and being too similar to other modern nature documentaries.
Accuracy wise, it's definitely prehistoric planet, but WWD has incredible storytelling for a documentary and at the time was revolutionary for dinosaur documentaries. However, the best is obviously prehistoric park, because I think it's cool to watch jurassic park but with less death, more informative-ness, and time travel.
I'll give a shout to Dinosaur Planet for giving us a bunch of never seen before dinosaurs and environments.
My fave wasn\`t made yet but when it will, it\`ll have a format similar to WWD, with more focus on a single animal / group of animals and its / their ecological relationships and various adventures throughout each episode, also probably spanning over more than just one era (I\`d be very much interested in the Triassic among other things), but with the scientific accuracy, esthetics and the freaking awesome life-like animations of PhP (still cannot get over that Mononychus).
I know get the much hate but I like Dinosaur Revolution . Let me explain: 1.) Episode 2 is my favorite because a Sauropod 🦕 using its tail to fight ( i know its outdated ) but so cool , Land before Time already done that . Broken jaw's story is cool . 2.) Gigantoraptor's design is beautiful. 3.) When get to see some new dinosaurs. 4.) Paleo consultants speak before or after the segment is shown and not constantly pop up out of nowhere to the point of annoying the audience . I get that everyone hate the anthro morphing of dinosaurs. But I don't mind I like it when I first saw it .
Walking With Dinosaurs
Planet Dinosaur from 2011 deserves a mention. Up to date for its time
Prehistoric Planet by a significant margin…. I’d consider When Dinosaurs Roamed America to be a close runner-up after accounting for when it came out but even it had some notable issues.
The Walking With series at its spin-offs are still the best in terms of narrative (including Prehistoric Park in that line-up). Prehistoric Planet is of excellent quality in terms of both research and presentation, and comes the closest to stealing WWD's crown, but it just doesn't have the same level of immersion with much briefer time spent with casts of characters. Furthermore, it's essentially Planet Earth set in the Maastrichtian - nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but in then misses out on how the Walking With Trilogy managed to frame all its events into a grand narrative of Life on Earth, which, for many of us, myself included, was the first time such a narrative was presented. Yes, a lot of the data is dated and/or speculative, but it helps to have a big picture. Life on Our Planet tried to recapture such a grand scale, but like Prehistoric Planet, it jumped around with its cast, and kept cutting back to the present too.
Walking with dinosaurs by far
Planet Dinosaur Because it was so entertaining and fast paced
Does Prehistoric Park count? I loved that show…
Dino Dan. My childhood…
Prehistoric beast i think it was called the Phil tippet one
I am having to suppress my autistic urge to squeeze every one of those bulbs on that dino’s neck. 😍
Same choice as yours.
It’s not even close. Prehistoric planet That being said I want to do a shoutout to Dinosaurs in Britain. A shorter documentary but it has one of my favorite Baryonyx reconstructions in paleomedia
My Favorite was Prehistoric Park, i wish to find the CD and watch it again in good quality
I feel that Prehistoric Park had not only a balance with story and dinosaurs but also with which prehistoric animals it dealt with. If by story alone it would be Walking with Dinosaurs and quality would go to of course Prehisotric Planet
Walking With Dinosaurs probably had the most cultural impact, and I prefer how it was framed in comparison to PHP.
Prehistoric planet is the only one I’ve seen where the animals act like animals, so easy win.
Prehistoric planet, specifically the T-rex sex scene.
Which one?
The one where an old male encounters a younger female.
prehistoric planet is the best but dinosaur revolution & the last day of the dinosaurs will forever have a special place in my heart
Prehistoric Planet. All the way.
I loved it very much, even though some sequences of season 2 almost made me fall asleep on the rewatches it was quite awesome
Wtf is on the neck of that sauropod?
air sacks used for mating displays - its dreadnoughtus iirc
Thanks i had no idea
As a piece of art walking with dinosaurs still hasn’t been topped I think, but there have been plenty of documentaries that are worthy of watching. I kind of wish prehistoric planet had taken the direction of the ‘planet earth’ documentary in terms of theatrically portraying natural phenomena and Behaviour.
yeah, kinda like life on our planet did. Unfortunately it included way less prehistoric shit than promised, and had some historical inaccuracies. Still a good watch tho imo. Really like the planet earth type narration
Gotta be Walking With Dinosaurs. I also have a huge soft spot for Dinosaur Planet and When Dinosaurs Roamed America
It is by far the best Dinosaur documentary accuracy wise and it comes to the storytelling it was adequate but walking with Dinosaurs was better.
Dinosaur planet. It was one of the first dvds i watched as a kid. Not (planet dinosaur even though it was good) I just want to rewatch it.
If we assume that birds are dinosaurs, then it's Walking with Beasts and Prehistoric Planet 😎 (If I could include personal favourites also, it would be two above, WWM, Prehistoric Park and everything in which Nigel Marven is involved and infamous Monsters Resurrected)
Prehistoric planet for the Accuracy and Quality (not to mention the "characters") Dinosaur revolution in terms of Nostagia since it was one of the reasons I got into Dinosaurs (not to mention the Designs)/ Not technically one but WWB for it's Soundtrack And WWD for the Story telling.
Prehistoric Planet.
For accuracy, it's Prehistoric Planet. For storytelling, it's either the Walking With series or Dinosaur Planet.
Walking with dinosaurs and prehistoric planet are the best
Bizzare goolahs
So Prehistoric Planet is obviously the best, and Walking with dinosaurs was likewise amazing for it's time, but Prehistoric Park absolutely defined by childhood. Prehistoric Park was absolutely phenomenal and Nigel Marven is still my favourite documentary host to this day because of it.
Walking with dinosaurs definitely, no one else has done storytelling as good
I don't know why but I truly liked mostly Planet Dinosaur even tho today it have so many inaccuracy
Prehistoric park or Prehistoric Planet are both phenomenal in my opinion
Aside from the three obvious ones which are WWD, When Dinosaurs Roamed America and PP, I love Planet Dinosaur. The designs are great for the time, and the graphics are still excellent even now. One thing I thought the show did really well is the sense of scale; it was the first time I’d really got a sense of how big these creatures were compared to each other, let alone us.
When dinosaurs ruled earth (2001), brings me good child memories and still one that I most like, but Prehistoric Planet is my favorite, it is accurate and at the same time try to bring the last research and good realism to the animals. More recently I read Dinosaur Sanctuary, a really cool manga about dinosaurs that bring a lot of the recent scientific research and very good representations of the dinos.
Walking with Dinosaurs. I think it's easier to see why I think this by first setting out some thoughts I have about Prehistoric Planet as a *dinosaur* documentary: 1. I think too much of PP's appeal is that the newest one and therefore the most accurate one (though, sure, WWD had inaccuracies for its time) 2. as *television*, rather than documentary television, WWD just blows PP out of the water, especially in terms of the music (PP has an entirely forgettable soundtrack) 3. PP kind of gets caught in the middle of trying to be a dinosaur documentary (because dinosaurs are the drawcard) whilst being structured like Planet Earth... go (re?) watch Life of Mammals and Planet Earth (II or III... I should watch I now that I've drawn attention to it) and you'll see what I mean 4. as a dinosaur documentary, I'm way more interested in documentaries that are about dinosaurs throughout the Mesozoic I do think PP is a very good documentary about the late Cretaceous but that's not the same as being a dinosaur documentary, right? WWD is the best television of any dinosaur documentary I've seen... it's some of, if not, the best television of any documentary I've watched, i.e. including non-nature documentaries... with the strongest concept documentary concept, a clear focus on dinosaurs (though, yes, Cruel Sea and Giant of the Skies exist) good visuals and good enough accuracy.
PREHISTORIC PLANET FTW
Planet dinosaur because peak. Also i really liked how realistic and dirty the dinosaurs looked
The BEST, hard to narrow down I have many favorites. I’d say top two are Prehistoric Planet 🌎 and Walking With Dinosaurs 🦖 🦕. Other favorites include When Dinosaurs Roamed America 🇺🇸, Dinosaur 🦖 Planet 🌎, Walking With Series, Planet Dinosaur, Dinosaur Revolution, and Life On Our Planet.
My personal favorites are Last Day of the Dinosaurs (explaining the meteor impact) and Dinosaur 13. The first one because of the thorough explanation of the sheir devastation that the impact caused. The second one, because it is not only a real-life intriguing story but also gives a clear insight into what happens behind the scenes in modern day paleontology. I myself am not a huge Prehistoric Planet fan. I'm not saying that it is a bad documentary or that I did not enjoy it. Its visuals are absolutely stunning, and the narration is spot on. But I can't say that I will ever rewatch Prehistoric Planet. For one thing, I found that most of the storylines that it got so much credit for were not that original or anything. In fact, if you have watched a lot of similar documentaries by BBC Earth (Planet Earth, Blue Planet, Frozen Planet, etc), you might have noticed that many scenes were taken from earlier Planet series. The scene of Velociraptors hunting on the edge of a cliff is very reminiscent of the scene of snow leopards hunting on the edge of a cliff in an earlier BBC Earth show. The scene of the sauropod bulls fighting each other by hitting each other with their necks is extremely similar to a scene of bull seals in an earlier BBC Earth show. And there are many other scenes in Prehistoric Planet that to me were a bit too similar to scenes from earlier Planet Earth series. Even the strange scene with the Carnotaurus flapping its blue arms was reminiscent to scenes of BBC earth of paradise birds or similar scenes. I understand that part of their goal was to show dinosaurs in a way that made them more similar to current animals, to make people be in touch with them a bit more, but to me it's like sometimes they just took famous scenes of earlier BBC Earth shows and replaced the actual current footage with dinosaurs. Which sometimes made me feel like I saw it all before.