Guest Author – James Lomax
Current Palaeontology & Evolution BSc Undergraduate
There’s something magical about Walking with Dinosaurs. The atmosphere of the show – the music, the narration, the ambience of each location – is enthralling, and arguably hasn’t been replicated in a documentary since. What is it about Walking with Dinosaurs that made it so special, that inspired millions of kids to become palaeontologists? I believe that the answer is in its storytelling.
For those of you who don’t know what Walking with Dinosaurs is, stop reading this and go watch it (you can find it on BBC iPlayer). We’ll wait.
Airing for six episodes form the 4th October to the 8th November 1999, the landmark BBC Natural History series was the first to use computer animation to recreate dinosaurs in their natural environments, and for 1999 it’s pretty impressive. The success of the original spawned several special episodes and sequel series covering different periods of geological history, all of which are brilliant as well (maybe besides Walking with Cavemen).
However, the trick to its success was the way the show integrated science within its storytelling. It created a masterful show-don’t-tell approach, relying only on the narrator to convey information plainly. The rest was hidden in the narrative, characters and even the music.
For example, the first episode, New Blood, set in the Late Triassic, details the rise of the dinosaurs, represented by Coelophysis, and the extinction of other animal groups, including the predator Postosuchus and the herbivore Placerias. Every aspect of the episode is dedicated to this brutal theme of survival for some, extinction for others.
The landscape is dry and barren – the harshness of the conditions impossible to miss from one of the very first shots being a skull, bleached white, under the scorching sun. We know this is a mass extinction before the narrator tells us.
We see a herd of thirsty Placerias, drool dripping from their mouths, and know they’re doomed. We see a pair of Coelophysis running over the dirt, in contrast to the slow Placerias, and we can tell that they are survivors. Even a viewer with no knowledge of dinosaurs already knows which creatures will soon go extinct and we’re not even five minutes into the first episode.
The music, impeccably scored by Benjamin Bartlett, does a lot of the legwork for setting the ambience of each episode – Time Of The Titans is booming, this is a prosperous time for the dinosaurs and there are giants everywhere, Spirits Of The Ice Forest is beautiful yet cold, like the freezing forest the episode takes place in, and my personal favourite, Islands Of Green, is melancholy but fiercely strong – the dinosaurs are about to go extinct, but what a brilliant run they’ve had.
For a child, this music grasps your very soul. Nothing else gets you so in tune with the emotions of a story than a strong soundtrack, and this story was well worth being emotionally invested in.
The narration, delivered by Sir Kenneth Branagh but written by series producer Tim Haines, is more grandiose and hyperbolic than most documentary narration. Even in just the first episode, the Triassic, which is “pushing life to its limits” is the “proving grounds” of a “grim evolutionary battle”. The Postosuchus is “the largest carnivore on Earth”, the cynodonts are “one of the Triassic’s most bizarre animals”.
It’s not enough just to say that the Coelophysis consume the Postosuchus, they must “eat her from the inside out”. Nothing kills a story like a boring narrator, but this script injects the story with so much life it does half the job of resurrecting the dinosaurs.
Which brings me to another point – all of the main characters are given their own pronouns – the Postosuchus is a she, the cynodonts are a him and a her. Each creature is its own individual with its own personality, each a little representation of their species as a whole.
The Coelophysis are wily and cunning – their bodies may be small and lithe but their craftiness helps them to survive the drought. The Placerias are “swaggering” and “ancient”, too stupid to think of a way to improve their situation. The Postosuchus, the “merciless” main antagonist of the episode, is solitary – while the Coelophysis can gang up to find food, the Postosuchus has nobody to help her survive, and she succumbs to her injuries. The Coelophysis are the ones to eat her – the crown has been passed down to the dinosaurs.
All of this I understood as a kid, and probably all of you did too. We didn’t need to be told about what changed in the Late Triassic, we saw it happening ourselves. This cast of characters performed it onscreen. The narrator could have been removed entirely and all that would be different was that we wouldn’t know their names.
Surprisingly, in the 25 years since, few series have replicated this formula. If a documentary even does feature animated dinosaurs, they are no longer characters in a story, just moving models. The animated segments are interspersed with talking heads or infographics, interrupting any kind of immersion.
None of this is any less informative, but it just isn’t as engaging for kids in the same way as treating the dinosaurs like characters in a story is.
Jurassic World Dominion is not a very well-loved movie, and yet, in my opinion, its prologue is the finest piece of paleo-media I have ever seen (ignoring the inaccuracies). There’s no talking heads, no flashy editing, not even a narrator. Just the dinosaurs, living their lives, showing you their story without it being told to you. There’s no music and it’s far too short to showcase any kind of narrative, but these three minutes contain exactly the flavour of magic Walking with Dinosaurs had. Imagine if a whole documentary series was filmed just like this.
What’s the best way to educate kids about dinosaurs? I believe that leaning into education as storytelling, as a form of art, is the best way to capture their minds. Once you control every aspect of cinematography, from the visual design to the music, and dedicate it all to expressing your key themes, the ideas you want to present, a child will learn a heck of a lot about dinosaurs before being told a single fact. Therein lies the magic of Walking with Dinosaurs.
About The Author
James Lomax is currently a Second Year undergraduate student studying Palaeontology & Evolution at the University of Bristol.
Article edited by Rhys Charles
All images in this post are taken from the series BBC World series “Walking with Dinosaurs”