Dragon's World, - a highly unusual documentary

[Soledad]

Okay, I promised you to write a review on Dragon's World, so here it is.

Frist of all, I can't tell you whether it was a true documentary or a fake. I wish by God it'd be a true one, because if it is, well, then it's just absolutely frigging fantastic! But I digress...

Anyway, the basic promise is, that some paleonthologists discover a few corpses in a gletcher (I'll have to re-check my facts by re-watching the tape, as I watched CSI at the same time), a few men, burned to their deaths, and a creature that looked like nothing they've seen before.

So they bring in this young paleontologist who became famous among fellow geeks for having found the biggest and best-preserved Tirex skull known, and he remembers having seen something very similar already. The funny thing is, that the former found was of the same age as the Tirex skull, the latter one from the 5th century.

So the guy develops the theory that both were the remains of dragons, and people laugh their heads of about it. But he doesn't give up, and since he works for some British museum, he and his team actually get the job to examine the new found.

Now, I don't want to go into details, but the whole thing is fascinating. They find out that the dragon (for that's what it is) has the same honeycombed bone structure as some flying reptils do, plus a bladder in its chest, which is filled with methane gas and hydrogene; these are created as a side product as its digestion and pumped into the bladder by the way of a special connection to the stomach. Now, this makes the beast able to: 1) lift off, as it makes it very light, and 2) to actually breathe fire, ingiting the gas with the help of platinum found between its teeth. Also, it has a bone plate in its throath, to protect it from its own fire.

After this discovery, the guy checks all suspicious founds and states that there were four kinds of dragons during prehistoric times: the original dragons that co-existed with dinosaurs; sea dragons, that survived the extinction because, well, they lived in the sea; forest dragons, developed from the sea dragons during the evolution of mammarls, and mountain dragons that survived as far as the Middle Ages.

Again, I don't know if it's a reals documentary. But the computer-animated movie clips were absolutely fantastic: the fight between a Tirex and a dragon; the sea dragon swimming underwater like a huge, spiked snake; the forest dragons sliding in the bamboo woods of Ancient China; the mating dance of the mountain dragons in the air; and finally the desperate fight of the dragon mother against men who invided her nest and killed her offspring.

They showed a neat idea about dragon breeding, too, with the dragon mother building a nest of rocks and heating it with her own fire to keep the eggs warm.

Anyway, it was a fantastic 2 hours, I hope you get to see it in your corner of the world.

[Anendel]

I hope it comes here! Whether or not it is true or fake, it sounds marvelous. Who produced it, and I wonder if they sell copies???

[Calaglinel]

Well, according to my TV-magazine, it was produced in Great Britain, in 2004. The guy behind the idea is someone named Justin Henry. It was almost two hours long - unfortunately, I didn't have that much place on my videotape, so I lost the last 20 minutes or so.

The flying mountain dragons themselves looked a little funny - like arthritic crocodiles, only with wings - but other than that, it was all very cool. Also, they assumed that the dragon didn't have an unlimited supply of fire - it all depended on what and how much it's eaten.

Soledad-in-disguise

[Dis Thrainsdotter]

Sounds like a program worth watching and I hope it will come to some swedish tv-channel. If it does, I will see it or record it.