That said, Dr. Tyson has done a good job updating the old Cosmos and paying respect to Carl Sagan in the first few episodes, even noting his meeting with Dr. Sagan and revisiting some of the same iconic locations made famous in the first series.
What surprised me when I re-watched the first episode of the original Cosmos was how it was at the very edge of new discoveries in 1981. Dr. Sagan discussed the Viking rovers on Mars in 1976, the discovery of rings surrounding Uranus in 1977, the discovery of Pluto's moon Charon in 1978, and the sighting of lightening on the dark side of Jupiter in 1979. The solar system was just opening up to us when the show was first broadcast.
And another part of the show was his concern for humanity's future that ran through the original Cosmos, which made sense then with the Cold War and could be mentioned again with the Russians acting up again. Dr. Sagan also mourns the loss of the great library of Alexandria, noting the lost knowledge and thousands of years it took us to regain this knowledge. Of course, I also saw some hopeful items that were not part of the first episode of the new series. For instance, the program gives us a view of potential civilizations on other planets in the Milky Way, which as before we even discovered the existence of any planets around other suns.
And I would like to make a plug for another terrific series that covers the Cosmos - Wonders of the Universe with Dr. Brian Cox. Similar to his earlier Wonders of the Solar System, Dr. Cox is a great story-teller that makes science come alive. And he too discusses our place in this vast cosmos and notes in the first episode that we are at the very beginning of a universe that will last for trillions of years. All of it is awe-inspiring. And one interesting bit of information: at the age of 12, Dr. Cox read Carl Sagan's book Cosmos and this inspired him to become a physicist. I expect his own program will do the same for other young viewers.
