Show about dragons combines science, myth
Imagine that scientists found a dragon’s body, well-preserved in an ice cave. Just think of the questions they might begin to explore: Could such creatures fly? Did they really breathe fire? How did they care for their young?
“Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real,” a 90-minute Animal Planet special (8 p.m. Sunday; cable channel 43 in Spokane, 47 in Coeur d’Alene), attempts to answer these questions as it intertwines mythology with science to explain fantasy facts.
“We’re imagining dragons in a way not done before, as real animals – as living, fire-breathing creatures,” says Charlie Foley, who created the show along with Kevin Mohs.
“It started as, ‘What if we found a body?’ – as part of a mystery, like the Stone Age man that was found near the Austrian-Italian border,” Mohs says. “We used it as the launch point.
“You have the same mythical animal in the Scandinavian, Aztec and Chinese cultures,” he adds. “The Inuits have a dragon myth – and in an area with no reptile to base a dragon on. How did they come up with the idea of a great, green, winged reptile?”
“Dragons” uses realistic-looking computer-generated imagery to tell the stories of four groups of the mythical beasts: prehistoric, marine, forest and mountain.
Framestore Visual Effects and Animation Studio of London – which did the CGI work in the “Harry Potter” movies and in Discovery Channel’s “Walking With Dinosaurs” – created the stunning images.
Actor Patrick Stewart, well known for his role as “Star Trek” Capt. Jean-Luc Picard and for his majestic, British-accented voice, narrates.
Peter J. Hogarth, who teaches biology at the University of York and has written a book about dragons, was assigned the task of making them biologically plausible.
“If you think of a very large flying animal, the only way dragons could have flown was to have something more than muscle power,” Hogarth says. “What could it have been?”
The program theorizes that dragons had sacs filled with hydrogen to aid with flight. “Giving hydrogen for flight helped with fire-breathing as well,” says Hogarth.
However, dragons needed a way to ignite the hydrogen, he says. So the writers devised a theory that dragons ingested platinum.
“Platinum is rare – and we are stretching geology a bit – but it would work as a catalyst to ignite the hydrogen,” Hogarth says. “But dragons must be careful about when they inhale. That would be bad news.”
Foley says the program also is based on the science of animal behavior in determining how dragons would mate, raise their young, and struggle to survive in changing environments.
Included is the story of a mountain dragon’s mating during a free-fall spiral that is a beautiful air ballet. It’s a ritual similar to that of bald eagle pairs today.
A mountain dragon also is shown, under siege, trying to feed and protect its daughter.
“We’ve captured the big spectacle but also got the small tender moments,” Mohs says. “The animals are individuals that you care about; you root for them.”