#wwd 2025

[jorgeburgos8]

Probably my favorite episode, and it helps that it has one of my favorite dinosaurs in it too.

[jaspell]

I think it was twice that the new walking with dinosaurs series colour coded the girl dinosaur pink and the boy dinosaur blue and I’m still fuming about it

like. Can we be serious for a second

[yeolwlrma]

elegance suits her 💖

[a-treatise-on-velociraptors]

I'm so normal about this

[zulacent]

So I just watched the first episode of PBS's new Walking with Dinosaurs (WWD) show. Unfortunately, I have to say I am pretty disappointed. And not with the look of the dinosaurs, they looked a bit goofy but I can suspend disbelief on that. My main problems would be with the way the episode is structured, and the reconstructed story it told. It follows the story of a baby Triceratops they named Clover, and the paleontologists that found her skeleton. This is a big ramble and will have spoilers, so I have tried to make a cut (never made one before, sorry if it doesn't work).

Firstly, the structure is kind of a mess. I can see what they were going for, cutting between the finding of her bones and her life. That could work, but would be best if they were discovering things about her, then seeing depictions of that in life. Like her diet, or injuries and how she might have gotten them. But because the framing device is them just digging her bones out, it doesnt feel right. It doesnt really interconnect. She does things pretty much irrespective of what the sceintists find about her, and the few instances they overlap (ex they have a little bit about T rex's brain structure and senses, then cut to it using those senses to stalk her at night) seem kind of random. Its not telling the story of the scientists unearthing Clover's fossil and following that whole process. Its them picking bones up and saying a few words on them intercut with scenes of Clover's Big Adventure. Neither story feels particularly cohesive or fleshed out, and they remove tension and interest from each other because of the way they are cut together.

Another problem is that they arent telling you much at all, and not saying what they do tell you particularly well. Im sure the show is well researched and as accurate as possible, but the delivery doesnt really convey much. Its clearly designed for people who know next to nothing about dinosaurs which is fine. But it also doesn't tell you much if ypu don't know anything. Its quite spase on actual details, and while they show things, like the way they protect fossils for travel, they dont explain the hows and whys of what they are doing, probably to avoid slowing down the scenes. But it means the informational scenes tell you almost nothing, and then you cut back to the Dino wandering aimlessly through the woods. It feels like less than half a documentary, or wildlife program, because I'm not learning anything. It also makes the dialogue feel really unnatural. Like there are sceintosts sitting next to each other, saying basically nothing about their discpvery other than how big it is. It makes them look awkward and kind of dumb, like they are being told to say something about this bone, but have no cue cards and have been forbade from saying anything to sciency. They also have the scientists respond to things the narrator says, rather than each other. I think the narrator gets most of the actual info dumps actually.

Then the story of Clover. Oh boy. It is Tropy as heck. Its Tropes on Tropes. First, unlike the original show, the episode only follows Clover, not any other dinos, so we have a single perspective. They also turned it into a sort of animated movie storyline, with inexplicable, never explained orphan Clover up against the big bad world. It is quite unrealistic in how the story comes across, mostly because we

A) Don't know how Clover might have come to be an orphan, or have any evidence for why they think she is other than not finding a pile of other Triceratops with her fossils (Clover is a triceratops. I might have not mentioned than before),

B) Don't actually have a steady plot to follow for her since we are constantly going back to the scientists, making her story just a few random scenes, and

C) are expected to beleive that anything she does is realistic.

The last one is the worst bit for me. She does not act like a baby of any animal, and none of the others really do either. She just does cute things. She rolls a Infernodracon's egg around, then tries to challenge it to a fight? What, why. Its like 4 times her size and keeps trying to stab her with its beak. It also ignores her as soon as it gets its egg back, even turning its back on her while she is still right next to its nest. Why? What actual animal does that? Clover also is attacked or right next to other dino attacks a lot, and as soon as she is not about to be bitten in half, she just stops to watch, like 3 feet away. She only runs when she is directly being chased, otherwise she watches, and we aren't even given a reason. Like of i was told trikes try not to run becuase they defend themselves with their frill, or that they freeze to avoid detection, it might make more sense. As it is, she stops for Plot Reasons, and the reasons are so we can see T rex eat or fight another Triceratops.

They let her befriend a baby of a different dinosaur to travel with them, and I swear to God they did the whole 'gentle nuzzle and head press where the two animals' heads fit perfectly against each other' thing. Its in every animal animated movie (where they aren't walking around on two legs that is). It was incredibly cheesy and fake looking.

Also, she is being legitamately stalked by a T rex, with no explanation. Its the Big Bad. It chases her down, even though she is super tiny and a poor meal. It is able to sneak up on the Infernodracon in the beginning, but then is too clumsy to sneak up on Clover later, allowing her to wake up (not the rest of the dinos, just her), so that she can stare at it and sound the alarm. Its so focused on her it dies because it ignores a hostile adult Triceratops that had already wounded it to go looking for her. It instantly dies when impaled with the triceratop's horns also. Just before that, Clover evades it by running back and forth right in front of its snout. The whole story feels very fake, and doesnt actually answer any questions about her fossils, mostly because we barely have any. The main ones would be why she is alone, and how she died. It doesnt give us answers or even speculations. It feels like a very thinly veiled plot to have a t-rex fight a triceratops, with a her fossil as a jumping off point. Or maybe they wanted to tell her story, but didn't have enough evidence to make something compelling, or thought no one would watch without a big dino fight. Regardless, it fells sloppy, and a lot less of a story than any other dino documentary i have watched. That really sucks. I was really looking forward to this, and i do love PBS and all that it does. I just feel like it didnt live up to its potential, not at all.

If i were making it, i would have kept the scientist and their investigation at the end. Maybe a bit in the beginning, to set the scene, but no cutting back and forth. That can't work here, because the scientists have nothing to add to the story being told. They can give us their theories or explanations for what we see in the dino story at the end, sort of like how prehistoric planet had a set of extras for each episode. They would also have to/get the chance to go more in depth about everything, how they found the bones, processed them, what they learned. They would be bound to the set of the dig site, and so could actually tell us about processing the fossils and theories about dinosaurs they don't really go into as is. Also, the dialogue can be more complex. They don't need to bury the audience in scientific jargon to explain how things work, and just having them sit around a coprolite saying "thats a big cloaca" "yeah, a big butthole" is not a valuable use of screentime for the scientists. Ultimately, i feel like if it stuck to the original formula of the original Walking with Dinosaurs (and Beasts and Monsters) it would have worked a lot better. They didn't have human actors, they had only the dinosaur scenes, and while they got things wrong, it felt more accurate. They did some anthropomorphizing, but not a ton, and it felt more natural. It also followed multiple creatures on different story paths that interconnected, so it never really felt like a Good vs Evil type story, which this unfortunately did. I really hope the other episodes are better, but I'm not holding my breath. It really is a shame.

[hidden-but]

I'm slowly making my way through the new Walking With Dinosaurs and I love how spooky the face proportions of Carcharodontosaurus look.

I love how clearly it is narrower than the face of a t rex

And yeah, it's sticking to the fossil finds, but it's still interesting to see how the more bulky face of t-rex kinda became the large theropod default, and how off a different face plan feels, especially shown in action.

[saphariadragon]

As someone who is a Paleonerd and with a background in animation I have thoughts on Walking With Dinosaurs 2025.

1. The designs were... Meh. They seemed to take inspiration for the T-Rex more from the movie monster side of things than actual animal and there was some minor shrinkwrapping. Not terrible but meh.

2. The lighting and texturing? That was kind of off the entire way through and especially egregious on the nighttime edmontasaurs. They looked plastic not scaled and the utahraptor's feathers were... Too blended/soft as in there wasn't enough texturing. Feathers tend to be shiny and the way they were catching the light was too fur like. Basically the lighting and the textures were in the uncanny valley for me.

3. The animation.... Oh Lord the animation. I will admit it got better in some of the later episodes but again, particularly bad in the first one with the triceratops, and the utahraptor's too. It was jerky, and just didn't feel right. It's almost as if they didn't do any squash or stretch or follow through or realistic exaggeration. Honestly it reminded me of earlier cgi where the models did not have the ability to be warped as needed to get nice animation. It kept knocking me out of immersion.

4. The weight and mass????? Where was it? Like the T-Rex in the first episode's dead azdarchid was stiff as a board. It didn't swing with the movement of the rex. Things kind of felt a little on the floaty side and they really didn't incorporate the animals into the environment that well. Hell even the filmed part of dinosaur, the animated movie from Disney from over 2 decades ago actually worked with the live action environment more.

5. Why didn't they get the original composer, who did offer, to come back?!?! Part of the reason the og was excellent was the music.

6. The storytelling... Was meh. I did not mind the paleontology sections(but then again I am probably an outlier) but the original WWD was known for it's storytelling. Taking time out of the story to justify every point was a bit irritating even if I found them interesting. Like seriously, let us immerse ourselves in the dinos and limit the paleontology interrupting to just when it's absolutely essential/maybe at the end.

7. Far too much focus on North America and the Cretaceous. Part of the cool thing about the original was that it featured a number of times and locations. I missed that.

8. A positive is that it was better than life on our planet and I enjoyed it overall.

9. I still enjoyed it because eff yeah paleomedia but at the same time I went back and watched prehistoric planet and went... Why...

10. Long story short it needed more care taken with the animation and storytelling and music. The pacing was off with the number of interruptions for paleontology. I did still enjoy it but it had some problems.

[photon-bytez]

I dunno about you guys, but this style of narration feels very much like The Future is Wild. Bertie Carvel can take some getting used to, but I think he's a good narrator like Kenneth Branagh before him.