Author: Will Harris (Page 124 of 261)

Earlier, when I made the comment about it’s a shame that the National Geographic Channel doesn’t have the same level of recognition that the Discovery Channel does, it didn’t mean that I don’t like the Discovery Channel. In fact, amongst the family of Discovery Networks, which includes Animal Planet, Planet Green, and TLC, there’s a ton of great programming to be had…and I’m not just saying that because they gave out these awesome tote bags at the end of their presentation. (For the record, though, National Geographic gave out a pretty sweet backpack themselves.)

I don’t know if there was some sort of elaborate coin-flipping procedure to determine who would get to go first, but if so, then the winner was apparently Animal Planet, who introduced their latest programming addition, “Whale Wars.”

“Whale Wars” focuses on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an organization whose members refer to themselves as “eco-pirates.” All things considered, it’s rather edgy fare for Animal Planet, with the group battling against Japanese whalers who claim that they’re hunting for scientific research purposes (as opposed to commercial interests), but you can’t say it isn’t gripping. You also, however, can’t say that Animal Planet is actually endorsing the organization by putting the spotlight on them during the program, since Majorie Kaplan, president and general manager of the network, said outright that they are not. “This is really a character study,” she said. “We think this is terrific television. We are on the boats. It’s not a piece of investigative journalism. So it’s the experience of life on these ships and this conservation organization.”

Paul Watson, founder of the Society, was onhand for the panel, and one of the more interesting revelations during the course of his comments was the fact that he was also a founding member of Greenpeace.

“I was the youngest founding member of Greenpeace, at 18,” clarified Watson, “(but) I left Greenpeace when I was 26 to set up the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society because I got tired of protesting and I just felt that this would be more effective to be doing direct intervention. Now, it’s true that I started out studying communications and everything, but I just fell into this. And I always thought it was something, in the early seventies, I would be doing temporarily. And here it is, 2008, I’m still doing it.”

Ashley Dunn, who assisted in the documentation of the organization’s activities for the series, described her work as “a warts and all representation of what happens on the ship. I by no means had any bias one way or the other. I was there
solely to document, and we did that 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We were their shadow, basically, and what you get is what happened. There are just no arguments about it.”

Ben Potts, one of the other members of the society, agreed with Dunn’s assessment without hesitation. “You could say that it was embedded with us,” she said, “because every time I rolled out and woke up in the morning, there was a camera in my face, and they would follow us around for the whole day. So they captured, yeah, every moment of that — of that cruise, of our campaign, and from our engagement with the whaling fleet right down to daily activities.”

So when you say “daily activities,” Mr. Potts, are you winking at all? If he’s not, his compatriot Peter Hammarstedt is. “I think there was a bit of a toss-up whether the series would be called ‘Whale Wars’ or ‘The Love Boat,'” said Hammarstedt, with a laugh. “Certainly, there’s passion.”

But let’s not make this show seem more sordid than it is. At its heart, “Whale Wars” is the story of a group of people who are trying to do right by some of the largest mammals on the face of the earth; it’s definitely not always an upbeat story, but when things go right, it’s downright inspirational.

“It really hit home to me just sort of what effects we were having for the survival of endangered species such as a fin whale when my mate, Giles and I, boarded the harpoon boat and we were detained in a cabin on board and for two, two and a half, three days,” said Ben Potts, another Society member. “We were looking out the porthole one day, and a huge whale surfaced just outside the porthole not more than 20 meters away. And it breathed, you know. A huge burst of
mist came out of its blowhole, and then its tail fluke went up. It dove. And the whole time, we were, like, ‘Quick, get away. Quick, get away,’ you know. We were on a Japanese harpoon boat. And, you know, if we hadn’t have been there, if we hadn’t have taken the action that we did and if the crew hadn’t have gone down to Antarctica, that whale would more than likely have had a grenade-tipped harpoon fly into its body. It would have been winched up to the bow of that ship, and then they electrocute them with low-voltage current.”

Good thing, then, that the Society was there.

Continue reading »

Despite the best intentions of my mother, I have never claimed to be a real history buff. Nonetheless, I always try to keep an open mind on the matter, particularly when it’s something produced by The History Channel. (Did you catch their program which focused on the pursuit of John Wilkes Booth? It was fantastic.) But have you noticed how they’re starting to put on shows where the content is only tangentially historical at best? I like “Ice Road Truckers” as much as the next guy, but it’s a reeeeeeeal stretch to suggest that it really fits snugly within the network’s format. I’m glad, therefore, that it isn’t too hard to accept the inclusion of “Sandhogs” into the line-up, since its origins stretch all the way back to the building of the Brooklyn Bridge.

David McKillop, head of programming for The History Channel, set the stage for those in attendance…like, say, myself…who weren’t familiar with the Sandhogs and their long legacy.

“They were the guys that went down under the East River and dug in the currents and the sand to create the foundations that actually support the Brookly Bridge today,” explained McKillop. “Sandhogs are urban miners, construction workers, who generation after generation have literally dug at great personal risk to build and maintain one of the greatest cities in the world. The work is extremely hazardous. Sandhogs toil underneath the streets today, as they did more than 150 years ago. They built the two tunnels that provide water to New York City that were completed in late last century. They built every single subway, traffic tunnel, sewage line, and steam pipe. They’re digging the tunnel that’s going to link the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central Station, and they’re digging New York’s third water tunnel, which when completed will be the largest public works ever undertaken in U.S. history…and it’s all because of these guys. They’re a special breed, a special society, the identity and the subterranean culture they inhabit is a bond that is truly shared as a brotherhood, and few people know they even exist until now.”

Continue reading »

When a brand name has been around for 110 years, you sometimes tend to take it for granted, and I must admit with great embarrassment that I’m prone to do that with National Geographic. As a result, I’m always glad to get a kick in the ass from one of their screener DVDs, so I can remember all over again how awesome a lot of the programming on the National Geographic Channel is.

When you think about it, it’s almost a little depressing that a name as recognizable as that of National Geographic doesn’t have the same kind of foothold on cable as, say, the Discovery Channel. Fortunately, Russell Howard, the Senior VP of Communications for the network, has every intention of changing that. He wouldn’t actually go so far as to utter the name of the competition, but when someone else asked if NG’s new “Expedition Week” was their attempt to create their own version of Discovery’s always-anticipated “Shark Week,” Howard replies, “We hope ‘Expedition Week’ will be…a long-running, successful series week like theirs, of course. We’ve been doing this for 120 years, and so it’s time that we emphasized it.”

What is “Expedition Week”? Well, we might as well let Mr. Howard talk it up himself:

“We’ll take you to the moon for never-before-seen images and deep into the Amazon jungle to find lost cities. We explore the mysteries of the Great Pyramid and uncover one of the greatest architectural monuments of the ancient world. We’ll see George Washington’s childhood home. It’s going to be an incredible week, and many of these are ongoing expeditions right now. ”

Fortunately, some of the network’s resident explorers were in a position to come in from the field and sit in on a panel, including Dr. Bob Brier, a mummy expert and renowned Egyptologist who’s participating in a show called “Unlocking the Great Pyramid,” Charles Dean Beeker, who’s heading up the team that has just discovered what they believe to be the shipwreck of Captain Kidd’s Quedagh Merchant ship off the coast of the Dominican Republic, and Kelly Hearn, who’s documenting a the recent discover of a heretofore-lost city deep in the jungles of the Amazon.

Oh, right, and Buzz Aldrin was there, too.

Okay, I’m totally failing at playing it cool about Col. Aldrin being in the house. Second man on the moon…? C’mon, that’s awesome! As soon as the panel concluded, I was in the lobby and shaking that guy’s hand. I don’t know if my daughter will ever be as impressed as I was, but it would be nice to think that, someday, she’ll be at least vaguely bemused by the knowledge that her dad met the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 11. (Probably won’t happen, though.)

The footage from the moon that’s going to be shown during “Expedition Week” will be the first footage from the moon since our astronauts walked on its surface back in the day. (I was thisclose to writing “many moons ago,” so please applaud my restraint, if you would.) Someone noticed Col. Aldrin staring quite intently at the screen during that portion of the pre-panel footage and asked if he was looking for his footprints. “Well, I was born in 1930, and my eyes aren’t quite that good,” he said, with a laugh. “But the film is just really fantastic in its high definition. And, yeah, I did look for Tranquility Base, but it’s 60, 65 miles away, and my eyes still aren’t quite that good. But I could see the smoothness, and I could see why NASA picked that as our landing site.”

I’m not looking to give the shaft to Col. Aldrin’s fellow panelists, all of whom were very interesting, but I’m gonna share the story with you that impressed me the most, I’ve gotta go with the one he told when the question was thrown out to the entire panel about the most exhilarating discovery of their careers.

Continue reading »