WWD: Giant of the Skies (Redux)
🕑 Added 2023-05-26 23:11:12 +0000 UTCAll of them together now; this is the weirdest episode from a modern perspective consider how poorly the story and the science behind it aged and so quickly. You got the North American Polacanthus re-established as Hoplitosaurus even before the episode aired, Iguanodon as a genus imploding into a dozen other genera, Utahraptor resembling a scaly, enlarged, Ostrom-inspired Deinonychus, giant Ornithocheirus, giant Tapejara, nearly everything about pterosaur physiology incorrect, and most of the cast not actually living even close to the same time.
Still, it was ambitious for its time, even if nearly the entire cast consists of palette swaps, and helped put more obscure pterosaur species on the map in terms of popularity, although people still tend to flub up Tapejara and Ornithocheirus stuff just because of it.
Comments
As someone who considers WWD one of his favorite documentaries of all time, I'd say these are wonderful! I'd love it if we could see an updated remake on the screen someday with these designs.
Yeah, if it were up to me, the roster would be revamped far more, but this was intended to be a "vanilla" update that doesn't add any new animals (unless it's replacing an outdated original species).
Ian Pendleton
The art for this is very well done all-told, especially given how badly and quickly it became outdated. I feel like that might've been a strength honestly since it gave you a lot of creative room to work with. I personally would've added Neovenator to the cast to redo the hunting scene from the original episode and reduced Vectiraptor to a smaller role, but that's just me.