About

Prehistoric Planet is a 2022 British nature documentary mini-series produced by the BBC for the Apple streaming service Apple TV+ narrated by English broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough. The series was highly anticipated by the online paleontology community due its high budget, attention to accuracy, and realistic speculation.

History

Announcement

The miniseries was first announced on April 2nd, 2022^[1] with executive producers Jon Faverau and Mike Gunton. The announcement also stated the series would have a score by multiple Academy Award winner Hans Zimmer and announced by the famous nature documentary announcer Sir David Attenborough, and made by the BBC Studios Natural History Unit, of Planet Earth fame. Many in the paleontology community saw it as the spiritual successor to 1999 BBC miniseries Walking with Dinosaurs.

On April 20th, 2022, the trailer for the miniseries was posted on the Apple TV YouTube Channel ^[2]. This trailer (shown below) gained over 5.8 million views within a month.

The series, which consisted of five one-hour long episodes, premiered on Apple TV+ on May 23rd, 2022 and the miniseries finale became available for streaming on May 27th, 2022.

Reception

The series was met with largely positive critical reviews, with the website Rotten Tomatoes giving the miniseries near-perfect audience and critic scores.^[8]

The series has often been compared with the Jurassic Park franchise, particularly in regards to the newer entries in the franchise seldom updating their depictions of dinosaurs to the current scientific understanding. Some have argued that the creatures depicted are aggressively retrograde compared to the initial films and are more monsters than animals, leading some to describe the newer entries with the derisive label “Awesomebro.” By contrast, Prehistoric Planet received praise for its efforts to depict the ancient life in the series in line with modern understandings and like living organisms.

Related Memes

Hank the T. rex

The official sneak peek of the series on YouTube^[3] was a segment of the first episode, showing several young tyrannosauri. The adult tyrannosaurus is notable for being shown with more bulk than the dinosaur is typically depicted with. This adult individual was dubbed "Hank" by fans, leading to edits and fan art of him grilling akin to the I Just Wanna Grill meme and edits comparing him to Hank Hill of King of the Hill, who is also known for grilling.

Femboy Pterosaur

In the second episode of the series, there is a segment depicting the nyctosaurid pterosaur Barbaridactylus.^[4] Most of the males are depicted with a large speculative head crest similar to that of its close relative, Nyctosaurus,^[5] while females possess almost no head crest. Some males are shown to act aggressively over access to females. However, one male is shown to be morphologically similar to the females in order to mate without having to combat other males, an example of a speculative "sneaker male."^[6] In the episode, the guise of the sneaker male works so well that when spotted, one of the other males attempts to court the sneaker male, unaware that this individual is not a female. This behavior lead many to label the sneaker male as a "femboy pterosaur", using the internet term femboy, referring to males who appear feminine.

Cute Mononykus

Mononykus was a dinosaur featured in the third episode of the series. The dinosaur gained popularity due to being seen as cute, with relatively large eyes and overall being significantly smaller than other dinosaurs it shared the screen with.

Fire Starter Troodontid

In the fourth episode of the series, a lighting-caused forest fire is shown to break out. A dinosaur referred to as a Troodontid picks up a stick that was partially on fire and carries it to another part of the forest not yet burning in order to flush out animals to hunt. This speculative behavior is based on real-world behavior of animals in modern forest fires performing similar behavior.^[7]

Search Interest

External References