Science on TV

Many exceptional titles are reviewed in each issue of SB&F. Here is our selection of the reviewers' favorites from September 1999 SB&F.

September 1-30/Weekdays, 9:30 a.m.; 5:00 p.m.; and 7:00 p.m. (ET)/30 min./CC

Created for kids and by kids, ZOOM is a new version of the Emmy Award-winning 1970s PBS children's show. The new ZOOM features games, plays, science experiments, and other activities based on contributions sent in by kids from across the country. Targeted at ages 6-12, ZOOM combines the spirit of the original series with '90s energy and technology. A Web site and a variety of companion outreach materials and activities accompany the show. 

September 1-30/Weekdays, 3:30 p.m. (ET)/30 min./CC

Healthweek features the week's top news in health, medicine, and related environmental issues. The magazine-style format presents reports on advances in medical research, treatment of various diseases and disorders, and profiles of people in the health-care industry. The weekly series also explores public policy and the economics of health care.

September 10/ 10:00 p.m. (ET)/60 min./CC

This fall, some U.S. children will be returning to school not knowing who their teachers will be. Many parents worry that unqualified teachers will cheat their children out of a quality education. The Teacher Shortage: False Alarm? is an episode of the Merrow Report that studies the American school system to ascertain the validity of the teacher crisis and takes a closer look at our system of public education, revealing flaws that make the teacher shortage look more like a self-inflicted wound. 

September 14-28/Tuesdays, 8:00 p.m. (ET)/60 min./CC

The Life of Birds by David Attenborough is a new series that features a variety of birds and their ways of life.

• The Demands of the Egg illustrates that the birds' drive to reproduce is fraught with danger, from the battle for a nest site to the unrelenting threat of predators. The ability to fly prevents birds from producing live young, as mammals do. To keep their weight down, birds lay each egg as soon as its formed. But once outside the body, the egg must be kept safe from predators and needs to maintain the correct body temperature. (9/14)
• The Problems of Parenthood relates that with insatiable appetites to provide for and the need for unfailing vigilance, bringing up baby birds is a full-time job that requires very special skills. Some birds feed all their young equally, while others feed the biggest. Some birds also take on helpers to help rear their young. (9/21)
• The Limits of Endurance shows that in the unending struggle for survival, changes and disasters wrought by both nature and man create new challenges that birds must constantly meet and overcome. Many not only survive, but breed in environments that other creatures cannot endure. (9/28)

September 22/8:00 p.m. (ET)/150 min./CC

Seeking Solutions with Hedrick Smith focuses on how several communities developed effective grassroots responses to local crime problems such as teen gangs, street crime, ethnic violence, and hate crimes. The program is a mix of documentary segments and three town-hall dialogues from Portland, Oregon; Kansas City, Missouri; and Columbia, South Carolina. 

September 29/8:00 p.m. (ET)/60 min./CC

Adventuring in Canada: Lewis & Clark's Inspiration is an Anyplace Wild special that brings to life the historic transcontinental treks of Alexander Mackenzie in British Columbia along part of Mackenzie's 1793 route. Accomplishing the feat 12 years before the better-known exploits of Lewis and Clark, Mackenzie was the first European to record a journey across North America. It  was Mackenzie's account of his adventures, published in 1801, that inspired President Thomas Jefferson to commission the Lewis and Clark expedition. 
 
 

Discovery Channel Highlights

Go to PBS

Go to The Learning Channel

September 11-25/Weeknights, 7:00 p.m. (ET/PT)/60 min.

From the Wild Discovery series:

• Swamp Alligator follows the life of a young alligator who might seem invulnerable when he grows up, but endures much peril to get there. This episode sees the young ‘gator’s siblings fall prey to an array of predators. (9/11)
•  Zebra’s World reveals the plains zebra as one of Africa’s most adaptable and successful grazers. While they may be indistinguishable to outsiders, there is a distinct social order wherein one male may have a harem of up to six females acquired through conquest. This episode sheds light on the little-known world of the plains zebra, its nomadic lifestyle, and the many dangers that it faces from birth, including lions, hyenas, crocodiles, and the seasonal draught (9/18)
•  Australia’s Marine World: Part 1 claims Australia’s Great Southern Ocean is the most diverse cold water habitat on the planet, containing crabs with giant claws, handfish that walk instead of swim, and carpet sharks with a reputation for being the most aggressive of all sharks. The program charts the predation, defense, and courtship of each of these creatures in a highly competitive environment. (9/20)
•  Australia’s Marine World: Part II reveals the Great Barrier Reef as the largest construction of any kind in the world and the host to more species than any other habitat in the world. Viewers witness a sawshark, with its teeth outside its mouth, an octopus that mates at arms length, and a cone shell that can kill a human with its poisonous dart. (9/21)
•  Sita and Son follows the saga of a family of wild tigers living in a national park in India. Sita, the dominant tigress, has spent two years raising her three cubs, and has decided to send the young tigers out on their own. Sita’s oldest daughter, Bachi, still lives nearby and has cubs of her own. Charger, Bachi’s father, also returns to the area to enforce his claim on the territory. (9/25)

September 12/8:00 p.m. (ET/PT)/30 min.

Extreme Alaska depicts the state in all its extremities: vast, cold, windy, and wild. Its climate and landforms are shaped by two oceans, the moving earth and frozen polar air. Through it flows the Yukon River, perhaps the last untamed river on North America. In this film Alaska’s story unfolds in photographs of landscapes and the native peoples, what the land means to its inhabitants and what it symbolized to those who came to conquer it.

September 13-30/Weekdays, 10:00 p.m and Saturdays, 4:00 p.m. (ET/PT)/30 min.

Emergency Vets allows viewers to witness the life and times of the staff of a Colorado veterinary hospital. Each series features the journeys that pet owners endure when their animals face medical treatment, and captures the actual work of a group of veterinarians as they treat all manner of pets at the hospital.
September 19/ 10:00 p.m. (ET/PT)/60 min.

Preemies: A Fight for Life—In a Northern California children’s hospital, doctors perform a C-section on a young mother-to-be diagnosed with toxemia of pre-eclampsia, in order to save the mother’s life. The baby is delivered 12-weeks early, and must be monitored because of underdeveloped lungs, a condition not uncommon in premature births. This episode pursues a new series of treatments that increase babies’ chances dramatically. Another baby, born after 24 weeks, is not so lucky. Doctors have a difficult time helping a baby that tiny breathe, eat, and perform other bodily functions. Doctors reveal what it takes to help these infants cling to life, and how their chances of a normal life have improved.

September 20/ 9:00 p.m. (ET/PT)/60 min.

Frozen Hearts—Since the 1950s, Western doctors have used the heart/lung machine to pump oxygen rich blood to the brain during heart surgery. Because of the risk of brain injury associated with the use of this apparatus, doctors at one hospital in Siberia have developed their own method of preserving brain function during heart surgery. They induce hypothermia in patients, slowing their body functions to a near standstill and allowing the brain to survive while the heart is stopped. Viewers witness this procedure when a ten-year-old girl is frozen to the brink of death before surgeons begin working on her impaired heart. Russian doctors claim that fewer patients suffer brain damage as a result of this technique, as opposed to those placed on the heart/lung machine.

September 20/10:00 p.m. (ET/PT)/30 min.

Banished: Living with Leprosy presents leprosy as one of the most infamous diseases in history. Now known as Hansen’s Disease, it has been misunderstood and feared for centuries. Viewers hear first-hand accounts from victims with this incurable disease, witness fears spoken by society, and gather hope from the brighter future with today’s highly effective drug therapies for this once fatal, deforming condition. One Hansen’s victim portrayed in this episode recalls being whisked away on the eve of her debutante ball and exiled to a Southern hospital for the next 60 years. The program also brings forward the story of a 19th century priest who went to live among the almost 1,000 people afflicted with leprosy on a remote Hawaiian island.

September 27/6:00 a.m. (ET)/30 min.
Once Upon a Hamster invites young viewers to join Hammy Hamster, Martha Mouse, GP the Guinea Pig, Turtle, and Wise Old Frog, along with other characters as they explore life along a country riverbank.

September 27/7:30 p.m. (ET)/30 min.

The Aquanauts is a new series premiering September 27 and airing each week-night thereafter that takes viewers on underwater adventures accompanied by deep-sea divers, marine biologists, and zoologists. The show travels to Indonesia, Mexico, Belize, British Columbia, California, Papua New Guinea, and the Cayman Islands to explore underwater landscapes and introduce viewers to the creatures that populate the seas.
 
 

Learning Channel Highlights

Go to PBS

Go to Discovery Channel

September 11/9:00 p.m. (ET/PT)/60 min.

Speedway Survival addresses how racecar drivers survive accidents that happen at speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour. Advancements in car design and speedways have allowed drivers to walk away from some horrible crashes. With help from safer fuels and better designs to improved testing, scientists, engineers, and mechanics have been able to collaborate to make racing a safer sport.

September 12-13/9:00 p.m. (ET/PT)/120 min.

Universe 2001: Beyond the Millennium is a series that presents an overview of the universe as humans understand it today and how we think it will evolve in the next millennium. Using 3-D graphics, the series features animated sequences that offer insight into the Big Bang theory and the anatomy of the sun.

•  Stars—Scientific studies of our sun and surrounding stars are revealing discoveries that link electric and magnetic weather patterns of the sun with storms that rage on the earth. Similarly, viewers learn how the sun’s electro-magnetic properties can close the Toronto Stock Exchange and turn off all the lights in New York City. (9/12, 9:00 p.m.)
•  Creation—For years, scientists have speculated about the beginning of the universe. Some astronomers support the Big Bang theory while others purport the Steady State theory. Which one is correct? Telescopes that tune into natural heat radiation coming from space are helping scientists find answers to these and other questions. (9/12, 10:00 p.m.)
•  Planets—A new theory suggests that planets were formed from ice dwarfs or large solid lumps of frozen water. These ice dwarfs were causing cosmic collisions all throughout our solar system. Discover how this latest theory as well as cosmic collisions made earth hospitable and other planets in our solar system so desolate. (9/13, 9:00 p.m.)
•  Life—When NASA scientists found a lump of rock from Mars with microscopic fossils in it, the search for extraterrestrial life beyond our own became a credible objective. Researchers and scientists from SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) have spent decades trying to determine how an alien life force would contact us and if one does, how we would reply. (9/13, 10:00 p.m.)

September 14-29/Weekdays, 10:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m.(ET)/60 min.

From the Science Frontiers series:

•  Brain Snatchers reveals that before Mad Cow Disease became a widely known term, scientists were hard at work researching its source. As microscopic as bacteria and viruses, Mad Cow Disease has a 100% fatality rate. Mad Cow Disease is carried by twisted proteins called prions. Undetectable, prions can lay dormant in a host body for years before they gradually awaken and begin attacking the central nervous system. This episode follows the forty-year biological detective story that led to the discovery of the prions. Viewers travel from the highlands of New Guinea to the restaurants of England and the research labs of the United States to uncover the clues that eventually lead scientists to the discovery of this class of deadly proteins.(9/14)
•  Micro Miracles relates the combination of surgical techniques and manual dexterity that make microsurgery a demanding medical field. Viewers meet members of the microsurgery community across three continents. Within the multiethnic medical community, senior surgeons cross borders to instruct their colleagues on the techniques of surgery and share emerging developments in this fast-paced field. (9/15)
•  Ancient Astronauts investigates theories that suggest earth’s primitive ancestor’s evolution from caves to the civilized world was guided by shamans. In their minds, these worldly beings broke orbit with earth and traveled the universe visiting distant worlds. Evidence from the past and present suggests that shamans may have been the inspiration behind earth’s most intriguing architectural marvels, including the pyramids of Egypt and Mexico. (9/16)
•  Science Times: The Mystery Virus points out that the flu virus is the most common and the most deadly virus known to humans. The virus’ ability to mutate makes it the most resilient and dangerous virus humans have ever encountered. Viewers discover why and how the flu virus mutates and gain insight into why scientists are constantly racing to remain only one step behind every mutation. (9/28)
•  Medical Detectives: Cement the Case introduces a forensic geologist and a forensic dentist who helped solve a mysterious murder. (9/29, 9:30 p.m.)
•  Medical Detectives: Core Evidence reveals the cause of another mysterious death to be E. coli, the deadly bacterium found in foods from infected meat to apple cider. (9/29, 10:00 p.m.)

September 27/10:00 p.m. (ET/PT)/60 min.

The Greatest Relief Organization: The Red Cross goes inside the Washington, D.C. headquarters, where managers explain how they organize their massive relief operations and coordinate the chaos of working on roughly 70 active disasters at a time. Viewers learn how relief work comes together: the storm tracking, the population and property evaluation, damage assessment, dispatch of aid vehicles and distribution of supplies, volunteer training and rotation, and psychological support for both volunteers and the people they help. Volunteers across the country describe what it is like to jump into a disaster and brave demanding living conditions and emotional turmoil. 
 
 

Back to Top