Last night, after obviously watching the X Factor results with the fabulous Celine Dion showcasing her new song 'Loved Me Back To Life' and Robbie Williams just casually standing in the middle of the stage on a like five metre high pirate ship, I reluctantly tuned into Richard Hammond's send part of his two part series about science and what makes up the world and universe. All very profound for a Sunday evening. Anyways, I say I was reluctant to watch it because I'm not a great science lover and it all kind of goes over my head making the whole programme usually unbearably boring but this show was surprisingly okay.
I missed the beginning due to the X Factor results and so came in about fifteen minutes in where Richard was climbing up a huge tower in the middle of the desert. At first I thought what the hell? Then I was like oh okay he's got to be up high to build the universe and stuff, but then I realised that I had been fooled as it turned out to be CGI effects in an attempt by the producers to make the show more edgy. They failed. I was thoroughly miffed to put it nicely that he hadn't risked his life climbing thousands of metres into the air in the desert. I was further disappointed at the show's trickery when I had the realisation that he wasn't actually going to build a universe, merely tell us by asking a variety of scientists in America how the universe was formed and what it needs to survive. At this point my hopes was dashed and I was on the verge of turning the telly off, something I rarely do! So Richard needed to pull out the big guns and he did. Well I say he did, more like the experts that were with him did. He kind of just stood there asking the kind of questions I would ask like 'is it hot if I touch this burning rock?'. The burning rock bit was actually quite interesting and related to how the sun is just far enough away so it doesn't burn us like the rock but close enough so that we don't freeze. As the experts shone this massive mirror, projecting the sun at the rock, bits began to pop off like popcorn which Richard informed us was something to do with how asteroids occur.
After this excitement I needed to cool down but no! We were then treated to a look at some of the equipment NASA (what does NASA stand for? If you know comment and tell me) uses when it goes on space missions and what it plans to use when we hopefully send a man or woman to Mars in what they hope will be about ten years time. If they are hoping to live up to that goal then they really need to work on the safety aspect of the mission like, oh I don't know, the fact that the air has no oxygen or atmosphere. So the old up for anything good sport that is Richard Hammond, got into a space suit and pranced around looking like he'd put on about twenty stone. You could kind of see that the NASA experts were like 'he's a bit of a prat' but they were gracious enough to play along with him.
One bit of the programme that made me cringe was when some Italian scientists searching for the most inhabitable part of the world, went cave climbing or more like crawling and dropping from dangerous heights, all in the name of science. From what I could tell, their dangerous expedition wasn't just for thrills, they actually wanted to see if life could occur anywhere and what the sole factor was for sustaining it. Fair enough but still it was all pretty risky. So they crawled to the deepest and most deadly part of the caves where we were told a poor diver man was going to look for life in toxic water. What the fudge?! No mate. I was shouting at the telly, 'it ain't worth it!' but he didn't listen - typical bloke : P. So he went down into the water of death and thirty painstakingly long and tense seconds later found some live plant living purely on water as there was no light, oxygen or nothing down in the cave. He came up for air, but as the lady scientist was speaking to the camera about the discovery, the diver was still in the bloody toxic water! She wasn't even concerned, might as well have kicked him back under now he got her the sample.
So in the end it all worked out and was actually one of the most engaging science based telly programmes I have seen in a while. Although I found it odd the Richard Hammond, the bloke famous for driving cars and being a fool with obnoxious pal Jeremy Clarkson, he didn't do too bad a job as a presenter. Overall I give the show a 7/10 because although I thought it was okay I wouldn't watch the next one in the series. If you watched it or anything or have any suggestions for other TV shows you think I should watch and post about let me know it the comment section or send me a message!
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