Walking with Dinosaurs (1999) Review

CCC’s Walking With Prehistoric Life Marathon!

I was, and still am, a huge fan of dinosaurs and all other forms of prehistoric life. Before I discovered writing, I always wanted to be a paleontologist and dig up dinosaur bones. Imagining what these long-extinct creatures were like as living, breathing creatures will be a science-based fantasy I will continue to imagine forever. 

In May of 2000, my dinosaur fandom hit perhaps the highest of all high points. The Disney film Dinosaur came out, and right around the same time, a BBC series premiered on the Discovery Channel. Little did I know at the time that it had first been on TV in the UK a year earlier (as was almost always the case with every BBC series), but it was not only a brand-new dinosaur TV show to get excited about, it was unlike any show that had come before it. This wasn’t PaleoWorld or When Dinosaurs Ruled, with a focus on paleontologists talking about fossils with cheap snippets of poor animation, oh no. This was a Jurassic Park level of realism, with a nature documentary approach. 

Walking with Dinosaurs aimed to show dinosaurs how they really lived, with up-to-date science fuelling each episode’s narrative of creatures brought back to stunning life. This five-part series was a huge success when it first came out, and began a sprawling saga through the history of life on earth. I’ve been a fan of the “Walking with…” franchise (collectively known as Walking with Prehistoric Life) since the beginning, and continue to revisit episodes from time to time. 

You might recognize the title from the 2013 movie, but that was Walking with Dinosaurs in name only. I wouldn’t even call it an adaptation of the series, because it’s not really anything like it. The movie has annoying narration, childish humour, and a poor story. There’s also a live-action stage show, which is much truer to the series. While I haven’t had the chance to see it in person unfortunately, the footage available online demonstrates the high-quality animatronics used to bring dinosaurs back to life. Despite a prolific history, not everyone is as familiar with some of the other shows aside from Walking with Dinosaurs, and many don’t even know the franchise exists at all. Despite being between 15 and 20 years old, all of them hold up pretty well today, and are still worth watching even if you’ve never seen any before. 

I’ve been meaning to talk about Walking with Prehistoric Life for a while, so why not do all of it in one shot? This is CCC’s Walking with Prehistoric Life Marathon! First up, the one that started it all. 

Walking with Dinosaurs (1999) Review 

Of all the major ages of ancient creatures, the age of dinosaurs has been and always will be the most-beloved. Dinosaurs are just so awesome; every kid went through a dinosaur phase, and many of those kids never stopped loving them, myself included. Walking with Dinosaurs is entertainment first and foremost, but as a kid, it was as real to me as any BBC nature documentary, showing them not just as ferocious prehistoric monsters, but as living creatures that hunted, mated, and raised their young.

The series begins in the Triassic period with “New Blood”, at the beginning of the Mesozoic era, depicting a harsh world on the verge of major change. The dinosaurs have not yet taken over as the dominant species on earth; lumbering therapsid Palcerias move across the desert landscape in herds, and the four-legged archosaur Postosuchus is the top predator in the ecosystem. The next two episodes take place in the Jurassic period, with “Time of the Titans” following a group of sauropods, Diplodocus, from birth into adulthood, as well as the other herbivores and carnivores living around them, and “Cruel Sea” shows life in the oceans, focusing on the ichthyosaur Opthalmosaurus and the predatory Liopleurodon. “Giant of the Skies” transitions into the early Cretaceous period, following the migration of a pterosaur, and “Spirits of the Ice Forest” shows mid-Cretaceous dinosaurs living in Australia, which at that time was much closer to the South Pole. “Death of a Dynasty” closes out the series in the late Cretaceous, when Tyrannosaurus rex was the top predator of North America, right before a meteor strike brings the reign of the dinosaurs to a fiery end. 

Every episode has a distinct look and feel, and no episode is sub-par or worth skipping. If I were to be critical of any one episode, though, it would be the final one. The pacing is a bit slow, the design of the T. rex is unappealing, and you would expect the conclusive extinction event to be a spectacle, but it’s quite brief and not shown that extensively. It’s difficult for me to pick a favourite episode, though. All of them have unique qualities, and show an abundance of creatures. I love “Time of the Titans” because it has the most big name dinosaurs, like Stegosaurus, Allosaurus, and Brachiosaurus, but the storytelling and visual effects are also just so well done. Honestly, I could watch any one of the episodes and enjoy it, or even watch all of them in a row like a three-hour movie. 

The environments were chosen for their similarities to conditions in the various periods, and occasionally real animals appear, though they don’t always contrast well with the cgi dinos. Like Jurassic Park, there’s a mix of computer generated effects and animatronics. While obviously not quite as good as a Hollywood-produced film, the effects are nonetheless impressive, and many shots actually look better than a lot of the cgi effects used in modern films. If I had to pick any one standout, it would be the herds of Diplodocus. They have highly detailed scaly textures, fluid movement, and even jiggling flesh as their great mass moves across the Jurassic landscape. The puppets and animatronics are used for most close-ups in all episodes, but occasionally there is some close-up cgi, and these shots are the ones that look the most dated. 

The music is incredible, with the overall highlight being the epic theme for “Time of the Titans”. The narration is by Kenneth Branagh, who is a pretty famous actor and director, and he does an okay job. His deep voice and British accent work well with the tone of the program, but sometimes his inflections are a bit out of place. He would go on to narrate several other installments in the franchise, but for the North American releases, every program had a different narrator. I at least prefer Branagh over the American narrators, but still would have enjoyed David Attenborough or someone like that instead.

One of the biggest criticisms of the series is the balance of fact-based science and the artistic license taken. As a kid, I took these depictions as one hundred percent real. As far as I was concerned, these dinosaurs were as true to life as possible, but as an older viewer looking back, I learned that was far from the truth. While some assumptions had to be made, like what colours they were or how they sounded, scientific accuracy was often abandoned in favour of being more dramatic. A couple examples: the giant Liopleurodon was less than half the size in real life, and evidence that the raptors like Utahraptor were feathered had already been discovered, but the raptors are shown with the outdated scaly skin. 

I find it’s a little tough to criticize this aspect of the series, because the show ultimately is a fantasy program—we’ll never really know exactly what dinosaurs were like in life—but when it’s touted that what’s being presented is the most-realistic depictions ever, it brings into question the responsibility the creators have in perpetuating misconceptions and confusion for viewers who are actually interested in learning while being entertained. Still, the intentions were good, and despite all the inaccuracies, the series still remains one of the preeminent examples of realistic dinosaur depictions. 

Walking with Dinosaurs set a new standard for dinosaur documentaries and on-screen depictions of prehistoric creatures. While many subsequent programs, both from BBC and Discovery Channel, would try to top what it had done, and even succeed in certain ways, no other program focused solely on dinosaurs has been able to surpass Walking with Dinosaurs in terms of visual grandeur, engaging storytelling, and immersive realism.