Hello. Well, quite wonderfully,
BBC Four have agreed to give me their channel for an evening.
They asked me what I'd like to play, and I said,
I'd like to play science.
Science fiction, science documentaries.
I'd like to look back through the BBC's archives to choose,
well, re-watch the things I remembered watching
when I was little,
because these are all things from the '70s and '80s.
Also to invite some of my heroes onto a programme like this
so I can talk to them.
So I invited two of my science heroes onto this programme.
One is Professor Alice Roberts,
who makes, I think, some of the best documentaries on television today.
The other one is... should be Professor.
I should be a professor, yes.
Brian Blessed. I probably am in Tenerife!
I should say the reason I invited Brian... You probably understand
why I invited Alice onto the show, talk about science documentaries.
The reason I invited Brian on is that he has acted
in some of my favourite science-fiction television
across the decades, including one of the programmes
I have chosen to show, which, I call it Into Infinity.
Some other people call it The Day After Tomorrow.
Yes, The Day After Tomorrow, Into Infinity was written by a scientist.
Gerry Anderson deviated from his Thunderballs etc and said,
"I'm going..." Thunderbirds!
I beg your pardon, Thunderbirds.
Talking about science fiction, Alice, for you,
was that one of the motivations? I loved Star Trek.
We used to watch Star Trek as a family and I really enjoyed that...
Immersing yourself in imaginary worlds
and thinking about the possibilities, I suppose.
It blows open the possibilities, doesn't it,
rather than having dramas that are set in our world.
Having them set on other worlds where things are different,
where there are different animals, different plants,
different gravity, all of those things.
But I think for me, the thing which really drew me to science
was looking at much more everyday things, actually,
so it was the world around me
and particularly understanding plants and animals, and us as well.
You're a medical doctor, but it's also anthropology, isn't it?
Yeah, physical anthropology. So it's people.
But it was biology and plants and insects
that got you interested in the first place?
I remember being absolutely gripped by the idea
that you could see things which were invisible to the naked eye.
That's what really got me interested in biology.
And I had a microscope when I was younger
and I would stick everything I possibly could underneath it.
For me, one of the reasons I've chosen Into Infinity later,
I couldn't tell the difference between science fiction
and science fact at the time. It didn't matter to me.
It was about space flight and the exploration of space.
That was the thing that, I think, triggered my interest in science.
I know that you're going to go into space, aren't you?
I don't want to go on a tirade.
At the age of six, you know, we were told at infant school
that there were other worlds besides the Earth.
It took my head off as a child.
Mrs Gummersall said, "Yes, Brian, and one of the nearest ones is Mars
"and it's all red."
I painted Mars, and I couldn't get it out of my head.
You were at school...
Within 20 or 25 years later, we went to the moon.
Yes. Did you imagine that? We've got some clips.
It's one of my favourites, actually.
It's from Apollo, and particularly Apollo 13.
Houston, we've had a problem here.
This is Houston, say again, please.
Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a Main B bus undervolt.
Roger, Main B undervolt.
We had a pretty large bang
associated with the caution and warning there.
OK now, let's everybody keep cool.
We got limbs still attached,
let's make sure we don't blow the whole mission.
NEWSREADER: 'For a reason as yet unknown,
'some kind of explosion occurred in the spacecraft's main engine.'
Houston says that they will get back to Earth alive
only if the lunar module's systems work perfectly all the way.
So, for the first time in the history of American spaceflight,
there is no backup system to save them if anything goes wrong.
'When they come out of radio blackout,
'all anybody can do now is cross their fingers.'
Apollo Control to Houston, we've just had loss of signal from Honeysuckle.
With Apollo 13.
'Just about now, they should be going through
'the moment of maximum heat.'
30 seconds to go for blackout.
We will attempt to contact Apollo 13
through one of the ARIA aircraft.
Continuing to monitor this, Apollo Control, Houston.
Apollo 13 should be out of blackout at this time.
We are standing by for any reports of ARIA acquisition.
We have had a report that ARIA 4 aircraft has acquisition of signal.
They're through.
There they are! There they are! They've made it.
APPLAUSE
All three chutes out.
Extremely loud applause here in Mission Control.
Extremely loud applause as Apollo 13 on main chutes comes through
loud and clear on the television display here.
CRACKLING RADIO
I make it no more than five seconds late.
Photo one, splashdown at this time.
Oh, it's astonishing, isn't it? Gasping all the way through.
It's a great piece of broadcasting, isn't it? I think that silence...
I love the fact that James Burke is sat there with his fingers crossed.
Patrick goes very quiet, he doesn't say a word.
Because they were personal friends.
And the heat shield was a great sense of,
"Oh, my God, the heat shield!
"Will it hold?"
It went to four minutes.
You'd put money on the heat shield is gone.
They're dead, they vaporised.
Did they know the moment it splashed down, that they were alive inside?
Yeah, they had the radio commentary.
And I think Lovell talks to them as Commander all the way through,
so they knew once the chutes opened.
You talked about when you were growing up,
so this would be in the '40s? In the '40s, yes, yes.
By the '60s, we have this tremendously optimistic world,
but also a world that was rather frightened as well? Well, it was.
I...
Sometimes I get so irritated by it.
As a child... my biggest love in life is space.
I believe we are the children of stardust,
and we don't just belong here, come on!
So when I address the Interplanetary Society or I address NASA,
which to me, a working-class boy, I do say, "Get off your arses!"
"Sod gamma rays, sod cosmic rays, find a way!"
You know, "All right, Brian."
"Just do it!"
I've been waiting since a child. The '60s promised so much.
Do you feel this, certainly in space exploration terms,
that sense of optimism is not there at the moment?
We went from, well, my grandfather was born in 1900
before the Wright Brothers and saw Armstrong land on the moon,
one human lifetime. Do you see that in your area of science?
It seems that biological sciences, life sciences,
seems to be somewhat different because now seems to be the age
of optimism and acceleration.
I think children at school, looking at what is going on in space
at the moment and just the extraordinary,
being able to land something on Mars and bringing pictures of Mars back!
It's just utterly extraordinary,
and the probe that is circling the comet at the moment.
Yes, that's true.
Attempting to land a probe on a comet, that's extraordinary as well.
There are these kind of exciting projects that are really
at the limits of our abilities
and really testing our technological abilities.
But I do wonder, Brian, you would have been one of the people who,
centuries ago, you would have heard rumours of this thing, America,
and you would just have got on a boat and gone there, wouldn't you?
Yes! Well, you're going to go now, aren't you?
Yes, I've completed my space training.
We've got some clips of you going through astronaut training.
Let's have a look at those clips.
BRIAN: 'Every cosmonaut or astronaut
'going to the International Space Station
'must pass through these gates for testing and training.
'While the chair rotates,
'you're given simple tasks to do by the supervising doctor.'
HE RETCHES
I just... I couldn't understand that.
I don't understand, because the machine only goes round.
'The awful feeling stayed with us for days.
'It made my kidneys ache.
I should say that physically, that looks difficult.
Well, it's surprising, because I'd been on the centrifuge,
lots of the other big machines.
The most that anyone had ever sat on it was 50 seconds, a Russian.
No-one had gone beyond, on that little tiny thing!
How long did you stay on it for? I stayed on it for just over a minute!
I thought, "I'll beat the bastard!"
Dr Fong said I was unwise.
"Space is not THAT hard," he said.
How important do you think physical exploration is to us?
Are you one of the people that thinks this is what we should be
doing, we should be exploring, going out to the other planets?
When we look at the division of science funding, for instance,
we have to have room for some of that really exploratory stuff,
because we don't know what it will lead to.
We also know that an awful lot of good has come
from blue skies research in the past
and so we have to make sure that there is room
for that kind of reaching out totally into the unknown, where we
are not even able to predict what the possible outcomes might be.
How important do you think science on television is
for, I suppose, stimulating these debates?
I know we all share the view - I think we all share the view -
that we spend too little on scientific research.
I'm certainly always banging the...
How important do you think scientific documentaries are
in advancing that argument?
Do you think they SHOULD advance that argument?
I think that it's important that scientists engage
with social scientists and philosophers
in order to really understand what they're doing
in a social context as well,
so that it's not just, there it is on a plate.
It's about how that fits into society.
Then I think television has a role to play
in terms of airing those debates,
as well as just showing people the results of research.
I think actually we have some clips now
of what I would call the more polemical side
of science broadcasting.
I think there was a golden age of this for me, in the '70s and '80s.
For me, Bronowski, Jacob Bronowski embodies this,
this, I suppose, offering your opinion as a science broadcaster,
rather than just presenting the facts.
Let's have a look at some Bronowski.
It happens that there is a philosopher called Friedrich Hegel,
whom I must confess I specifically detest.
I am happy to share that profound feeling
with a far greater man, Gauss.
In 1800, Hegel published a thesis, if you please,
proving that although the definition of planets
had changed since the Ancients,
there still could only be, philosophically, seven planets.
Well, not only Gauss knew how to answer that,
Shakespeare had answered that long before!
There is a marvellous passage in King Lear
in which who else but the Fool says to the King,
"The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven
"is a pretty reason."
And the King wags sagely and says, "Because they are not eight."
The Fool says, "Yes, indeed! Thou wouldst make a good fool."
And so did Hegel.
..Not until Newton turned this into a physical system,
that modern scientific method really begins.
We can see in this book, actually, where the stumbling blocks were.
For instance, I am convinced that it's because at section 12
on how does a sphere attract a particle,
that we see the immense mathematical difficulties
that he had to overcome before he could publish.
When Newton was challenged on such questions such as,
"You haven't explained WHY gravity acts,"
"You haven't explained HOW action at a distance could take place,"
or indeed, "You haven't explained WHY rays of light
"behave the way they do," he always answered in the same terms.
"I do not make hypotheses."
It's said that science will dehumanise people
and turn them into numbers.
That's false - tragically false.
Look for yourself.
This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz.
This is where people were turned into numbers.
Into this pond were flushed the ashes
of some four million people.
That was not done by gas - it was done by arrogance,
it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance.
When people believe that they have absolute knowledge,
with no test in reality, this is how they behave.
This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
Science is a very human form of knowledge.
We are always at the brink of the known,
we always feel forward for what is to be hoped.
Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error,
and is personal.
Science is a tribute to what we can know,
ALTHOUGH we are fallible.
In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell -
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ,
"think it possible you may be mistaken."
I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard,
I owe it as a human being
to the many members of my family who died here,
to stand here as a survivor and a witness.
We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge
and power.
We have to close the distance between the...
..push-button order and the human act.
We have to touch people.
I mean, one of the great speeches.
Wonderful, the whole nation shook when he said it. Yes.
The whole nation shown the bowels of Christ.
"I beseech you in the bowels of Christ." Yes.
That we can be mistaken, and it's such an important thing, isn't it?
And also of its time,
because I think that there were all these worries about where science
was taking us, and there still are today,
and I think to just rein it in and to say, "Actually,
"science isn't out there somewhere, science is something we are
"doing as humans and, you know, we can approach it with humanity."
I think that's such an important message.
Yes, and also that idea that science stands on the edge of the known,
looking out into the unknown, that nothing is certain. Yes.
That message is a very powerful one and you see it today in debates on
the so-called controversial areas -
GM crops, climate change, in particular,
you see this accusation that science is dogmatic... Yes.
..and it's a beautiful answer.
I heard when we were watching those clips, actually,
you said that you wouldn't...
Not necessarily the last clip,
that would be broadcast if anyone had the power to do it any time,
but the previous clips of Bronowski
where he pauses and he thinks and he laughs to himself
and then he says that Hegel is a complete fool
and he has no time for Hegel.
You said when we were watching it, "We couldn't do that now." Why?
It would be interesting to talk about that somewhat.
We both make science documentaries now. Yes.
Why do you feel we can't do that now?
Where there is room for opinion and there is room for differences
of opinion, you are not necessarily allowed to do that,
and you have to present a balanced view,
but I think it's possible to...
It is possible to express your opinion
as long as you're very clear it is your opinion.
By "not allowed", what do you mean?
What is the process by which you are not allowed to do that?
There seems to be so much concern about...
showing both sides of an argument even when, perhaps, actually,
the balance is that the vast majority of people hold one opinion
which is based on what the evidence is saying,
and there is a very small number of people who argue against it,
and yet somehow we have to listen to those people.
I don't know how to deal with that, because you don't want to give
the impression that there is only one answer,
but on the other hand you don't want to muddy the water
by suggesting that there is a real division
when you have got the weight of the evidence very firmly resting
with one explanation of the way the world works.
I must say, when I watch Bronowski in particular,
I wonder whether we are doing the audience a bit of a disservice
in this rather more structured and balanced view that we present,
because the power and passion of his views,
some of which I don't agree with and some of which I do,
is refreshing to see. It's good, isn't it?
There's a question to you, is it good to watch
something on television that you think, "I don't agree,
"but I see you've got an opinion, you're intelligent,
"you've thought about it"?
I mean, do you fancy doing something like that in the future?
Do you fancy getting these television people
and going, "Right, this is what I'm going to say?"
When you are talking about science versus pseudoscience
or science versus a non-scientific worldview
then I think there is room for scientists
to be much more polemical than they have been.
And challenging. And challenging. And I will do that
when I'm talking about evolution versus creationism.
I am very clear that creationism is not a scientific perspective.
You don't think there's room for balance there? You don't think
we should have someone giving the opposing view? No!
And I must say I do not separate the Earth
and all the wonderful creatures
and the ponds and the plankton and so forth,
and mountains and lakes which I go and devour as a human being,
go round them and want it so much.
I find myself standing on Chimborazo near Cotopaxi,
which of course, on the bend of the Earth,
is the closest place to Mars.
And I put my hand out, and I am now the closest you can be.
Not on the top of Everest, but on the top of Chimborazo.
Since I was six, I want to go.
There is a race memory.
We are not just Earthbound.
Brian, what I really love is the poetry that you see in science
and it really is the argument
against the argument that science unweaves the rainbow,
that we get rid of all the wonder and the poetry and the awe
of looking at the world if we start to understand it.
Yes.
On that topic, we have got some clips now from one of the greatest
scientists ever to have lived, Richard Feynman,
and in particular, he talks about the poetry of science
and in particular this idea of unweaving the rainbow.
I have a friend who is an artist
and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well.
He'll hold up a flower and say "Look how beautiful it is."
And I'll agree. Then he says, "You see, I, as an artist,
"can see how beautiful this is,
"but you, as a scientist, take this all apart
"and it becomes a dull thing."
I think that he is kind of nutty.
First of all, the beauty that he sees
is available to other people, and to me too.
I believe that, although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically
as he is, that I can appreciate the beauty of the flower.
At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees.
I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions,
which also have a beauty.
I mean, it is not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimetre,
there's also beauty at smaller dimensions.
We will have mostly atoms of one kind on one side
and atoms of the other kind on the other side.
Now, these atoms are jiggling around...
It's too small a box, you need more to get this effect.
Billions and billions of these atoms.
Now, these atoms are jiggling around.
LAUGHTER
I just put one more, but I'm getting tired of making it.
All the kids were playing in a field and one kid said to me,
"See that bird? What kind of bird is that?"
And I said "I haven't got the slightest idea of a bird it is."
He said, "It's a brown-throated thrush," or something.
He says, "Your father doesn't tell you anything!"
But it was the opposite.
My father had taught me. Looking at a bird, he says,
"Do you know what that bird is? It's a brown-throated thrush.
"But in Portuguese, it's a honto la pero. In Italian, a chutera pikita."
He says "In Chinese, it's a chong-ong-tok.
"In Japanese, apatara kupudecha", etc.
He says, "Now you know all the languages you want to know
"what the name of that bird is, and when you finish with all that,
"you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird.
"You only know about humans in different places
"and what they call the bird.
"Now, let's look at the bird and what it's doing."
Little pictures like this are called Feynman diagrams,
after their inventor, Richard Feynman.
He won the Nobel Prize for what he worked out with them
about the electric force.
We can describe the phenomena of light in this way.
An electron on the sun, when it has just the right energy
and momentum, can emit a photon,
and that photon or light particle travels through space
and comes into our eye, where it shakes an electron in the eye
and we see it.
This can be represented in a diagram
which we can represent the electron in the sun moving,
and emitting a photon, which is absorbed by the electron in the eye.
REPORTER: Was it worth a Nobel Prize?
That's...
HE LAUGHS
I don't know anything about the Nobel Prize, I don't understand
what it is all about or what's worth what.
And if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that X,Y or Z
wins a Nobel Prize, then so be it.
I won't have anything to do with the Nobel Prize, it's a pain in the...
HE LAUGHS
I don't like honours.
I'm appreciated for the work I did
and for people who appreciate it
and I notice other physicists use my work.
I don't need anything else,
I don't think there's any sense to anything else.
I don't see that it makes any point that someone in the Swedish Academy
decides that this work was noble enough to receive a prize.
I've already got the prize - the prize is the pleasure
of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery,
the observation that other people use it.
Those are the real things.
The honours are unreal to me.
I don't believe in honours.
People say to me, "Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?"
No, I am not, I'm just looking to find out more about the world.
And if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law that explains everything
so be it, that would be very nice to discover.
If it turns out it is like an onion with millions of layers
and we are just sick and tired of looking at the layers
then that's the way it is.
But whatever way it comes out, its nature is there
and she's going to come out the way she is.
Therefore, when we go to investigate it,
we shouldn't pre-decide what it is we are trying to do
except to find out more about it.
I don't feel frightened by not knowing things.
By being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose,
which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly.
It doesn't frighten me.
You see Feynman there, who is obviously unique,
he's one of the greatest physicists that ever lived,
and he makes a great television personality as well, doesn't he?
Yes, he does. He is very eloquent.
I think one of the things the BBC has done right recently is,
and I would say this because I'm one of them,
but it's employed academics to present science programmes
and helped them and essentially
taught them how to present programmes.
Do you think that's a good thing to do to - to try and focus on
academics and researchers to present the science?
Well, of course, I'm going to say yes again, Brian,
because I'm one of them, too!
I think that what you get is the real enthusiasm, don't you?
It's not about pretending to be enthusiastic about something,
it's actually not about acting.
Um, it's about talking about subjects
that you are genuinely passionate about.
The other thing I like about Feynman, he's just fantastic,
is that he's funny. Yes, he's very funny.
He's unique. Yeah.
But there's also that element of authority. He's very single-minded,
he's very famous for being extremely single-minded and straightforward.
When you train to be a researcher, you are direct,
and we had the discussion earlier
about how direct you're allowed to be on television.
Do you think that's important as well?
There is a certain attitude that comes to exploring the unknown,
you've got to have a particular attitude.
You learn that when you do a PhD, actually,
when you defend the thesis. Yes, absolutely.
Intellectually aggressive, in a sense. Yes.
And the approach to evidence and the...
I think the scepticism.
I think that's incredibly important, isn't it,
that you never take things on authority.
You always look at the evidence behind.
Sagan, his mother was very sceptical, wasn't sure all the time,
and his father was a man with all the imagination and stories.
We've got some clips, actually, It's a good time to see them,
of the great Carl Sagan in action.
Are we alone in the cosmos?
Is it possible by some poignant and fathomless joke
that we are the only intelligent beings
in a vast and awesome universe?
Now, the possibility of life on a hypothetical planet
of some of these stars depends on a number of factors.
Many of them are obvious -
the evolution of intelligence, of technical civilisation.
But there is one other and that's the lifetime of
a technical civilisation.
If the civilisation destroys itself fast,
we are not going to know about it, and certainly,
the recent history of life on Earth suggests that civilisations
may, in fact, destroy themselves
shortly after reaching a stage of technical competence.
We are thinking beings, we are interested
and excited in understanding how the world is put together.
We seek out the extraordinary.
PATRICK MOORE: I am fascinated that you don't entirely discount
any kind of life on Mars.
If there is any life there, what form do you think it takes?
Nobody knows, any more than if we lived on Mars
and examined the Earth through a large telescope
we could deduce beings as strange-looking as we on the Earth.
We look the way we do as human beings and as salamanders and as...
fish... PATRICK LAUGHS
..because of an enormous number of separate steps,
mutations and selection events in the four-billion year history
of life, which could never recur again on some other planet.
But, in general, how might one
go about performing such a communication?
How would you send a message to space? What would you say?
You obviously don't send out a message in English saying,
"Are you chaps Presbyterians?"
For one thing, they don't understand English up there.
The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean.
On this shore, we have learned most of what we know.
Recently, we have waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep,
and the water seems inviting.
Some part of our being knows this is where we came from.
We long to return.
And we can, because the cosmos is also within us.
We are made of star stuff.
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
The journey for each of us begins here.
We're going to explore the cosmos in a ship of the imagination.
Unfettered by ordinary limits on speed and size,
drawn by the music of cosmic harmonies,
it can take us anywhere in space and time.
Perfect as a snowflake, organic as a dandelion seed,
it will carry us to worlds of dreams and worlds of facts.
Come with me.
Before us is the cosmos on the grandest scale we know.
I think Cosmos is the greatest science documentary of all time...
I agree. ..still. Alice doesn't, in fact!
We were talking about that earlier. I'll get you letters!
It'll be terrible on Twitter!
You've said that you're not a Carl Sagan fan,
which is a terrible thing to say.
It's a very personal thing, obviously. Redeem yourself!
I understand he's a great scientist
and I understand he's a great science communicator
and many people have watched his programmes and learnt about science
but I actually can't bear him.
He assumes that kind of role of scientist as prophet.
It's his style, isn't it?
I attended one of his lectures at Ithaca, in Cornell,
and he said, "You know..."
We talked about life on other planets,
probably trillions and trillions of planets,
not dissimilar to the Earth.
Well, the current number is 20 billion. 20 billion?!
The current best estimate, based on the Kepler data. Marvellous.
So he was always fascinating about that.
And Sagan said, "All that's in science fiction,
"all that we imagine of life on other worlds, is human in concept.
"And it limits us, so that the life in the universe
"is much more varied and far different
"and far more complex than the human brain can envisage."
Well, he worked on the Viking programme, which was the first
spacecraft to land on Mars, the first to look for life.
Just on a scientific perspective, what do you think the chances are
of life emerging spontaneously elsewhere?
Let's say on Mars, or anywhere where there's liquid water, perhaps.
There are obviously a lot of planets out there which have the capacity
for supporting life in terms of being what we think of
as the right temperature and having water present
and all that sort of thing, and something like carbon or silicon
that you could base the structure of a body on,
but I don't know whether we've really got an understanding
of how unlikely our own presence is on the planet
and how much chance has a role to play.
Because I think it's probably likely that there are things like bacteria
out there - I'm not really interested.
I want things with potentially arms and legs and brains, actually.
I think intelligent life is probably extremely rare.
If I was to guess. I agree with you that I think microbes...
I wouldn't be surprised if the ExoMars Rover finds evidence
that there was, or perhaps still is, microbial life on Mars,
I wouldn't be surprised.
Or on some of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn
where there's liquid water.
But the more I think about and learn about evolution,
about your subject, the more I read about it, the more I think
that the journey to intelligence on this planet,
it certainly took 3.8 billion years to intelligence, in the sense of
a civilisation-building intelligence,
which is the way that SETI define it, actually.
They define intelligence as a civilisation that
can do astronomy, which I think is a reasonable definition.
The reason for that is sensible.
They want to communicate,
so they are looking for the number of civilisations
that we could possibly communicate with, and that means
you've built spacecraft or radio telescopes at least,
or you've emitted radio waves into the cosmos.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's only one intelligent civilisation.
I just think there are trillions and trillions, billions of planets
that have life forms throughout the universe.
Well, you want aliens, don't you?
I just think that beyond our imagination, limitless horizons,
limitless civilisations. With eagle's wings!
Yes, winged warriors is what you want! That's right.
And we need warriors from Vultan and his Sky City and Flash Gordon.
I...
Do it, do it, "Gordon's alive." What? Do it!
GORDON'S ALIVE!
LAUGHTER
So, Brian, let's have a look at some of your work in science fiction now.
Oh, if you must(!)
Skipper.
Skipper, we've gained a 0.5 degree error on launch.
Skipper.
I wouldn't wait too long, Skipper. The Altares is caught in
the gravitational pull of that sun out there.
Skipper, a black hole. We're being pulled into a black hole.
Ragna!
Look on this, an ancient scene, and see Yrcanos, a great warlord!
ALARM BLARES
And also Yrcanos, the even greater liberator!
He's certainly a man of little modesty.
Yrcanos? Eh? It's time we found Peri.
Of course! I need my queen to grace my moment of triumph!
Varoonik!
So you and those before you build your power on fear
and ruled them with it.
I ruled?!
I ruled a small prison planet
with never more than 500 people!
But with this, with this, I could rule 1,000 planets.
For that prize, do you think I would hesitate to kill you?
Now, take this ship back to Cygnus Alpha...now!
I was their priest!
I shall return to them a god!
ECHOING: A GOD!
I am Mentor, of the planet Psychon.
Why did you attack our ship?
We came in peace.
You send an armed ship to our planet and talk of peace?
That ship was a survey vessel, searching for minerals.
We had no way of knowing your planet was inhabited.
Yes, a familiar argument, commander,
one that has caused the death of millions of our people.
What do you think of these Alphans, Maya?
I teach you the priceless art of molecular transformation
and see how you use it.
Foolish games. I'd help in your work if you like.
No, no, there is a great deal about the work that I do
that you do not understand as yet. Oh, Father... Ah, ah.
Not yet.
There...
Unencumbered by death we shall leap from planet to planet,
from solar system to solar system, from galaxy to galaxy.
We shall be as gods in the universe.
Gods.
Alphans and Thulians will walk together into the future.
SCREAMING
SHE SCREAMS
I love Space 1999.
I've got a Space 1999 outfit. Have you?
Yeah, I had one made.
THEY LAUGH
For my 10th wedding anniversary party, honestly.
It was fancy dress and that was my favourite television show
when I was growing up.
It's good science fiction, Space 1999. Yes, it is. Well written.
It is. Space 1999 is very well written, yes.
Do you enjoy acting in science fiction?
I do, I find it such fun, science fiction.
I'm going to do a big one next year which I have to be quiet about.
I am actually going to be an angel, really.
A very quiet angel, very angelic...
It's ever since I did Who Do You Think You Are? the other week,
being very quiet about my family.
And suddenly, I have been offered this kind of great big part
in this science-fiction film as this angel, lovely and gentle.
It's surely going to be your greatest acting challenge! Quiet?!
THEY LAUGH
Being very, very quiet indeed.
Where you will fall in love with me is as Boss Nass in Star Wars.
Phantom Menace? Yeah. The King of the Gungans. Yeah.
(AS BOSS NASS) Me sound like this. The big frog with the head.
Is that you? I didn't... That's me!
I didn't know that was you!
JIGGLES LIPS
(AS BOSS) Mesa like dis.
You no think you are no better than us Gungans.
Maybe we can be friends.
Lucas phoned me up afterwards and said,
"Brian, I want something extraordinary here, Brian.
"Cos all the Jedi are kneeling to you,
"everybody's begging you to save them."
SPEAKS GUNGAN
May...
Maybe we could be friends.
I like this.
Ha!
He said, "When you did that, Brian,
"it cost 365,000 quid in special effects to go with your face."
Yes!
You see, it's 80 feet long, my face, big Gungan,
and I'm the hero in it.
I didn't know that was you! That's me, for God's sake.
I've got to show some clips.
The great Patrick Moore who was probably broadcasting
on the radio and on television when you were ten years old.
That's right. Let's have a look at Patrick Moore, a pioneer.
Like many of your viewers, Mr Moore, I have often wondered
when and why you developed your intense interest in astronomy.
Well, I personally began taking a real interest in astronomy
when I was six years old, simply by reading a book.
Well, of course, there's always been this intense interest in astronomy
and I found that even when I was young, way back in the 1930s.
It's grown, obviously,
but there are more people around and I don't personally think
that these space programmes have had everything to do with it.
Obviously, they have helped, but it is not the be all
and the end all of this increasing interest.
Consider the people who first maintained that the Earth
goes round the sun instead of the other way round.
People like Aristarchus in Greek times,
and Copernicus in the 16th century. They were regarded as eccentric,
and in the early part of the 17th century there was
a tremendous storm about it and it even lead to a trial in Rome
in which Galileo, the great scientist, was accused of impiety.
Because the stars are such a very long way away,
we want a good deal of space in which to operate,
and so we thought the best thing we could do was to utilise
a cricket field, where there is plenty of room, and ask
some of the Holmewood House boys to help us in our experiments.
I think I'd better show you, really, what it's all about,
and this is best done by means of a very simple experiment.
Will you please close one eye?
It doesn't matter which one.
And then hold up your finger and line your finger up
with my nose as you see it on the television screen.
Got that all right?
Now without moving anything, use the other eye,
and you will see that your finger is no longer lined up with my nose.
Now, there we have our set-up.
Paul, representing 61 Cygni, the nearby star,
is moving very obviously compared with the background stars.
Not because he's really moving,
but because the camera is.
We've really exciting news.
Halley's Comet has been sighted for the first time in over 70 years.
SPEAKS GIBBERISH
What does that mean, actually? That means "How are all you?"
"I am very pleased to see you this afternoon."
How many languages can you speak?
I can speak, altogether, three of the space languages.
One is Venusian,
the second is Kruger, the planet Kruger 60B. Yes.
And Pluto. What about Martian?
Martian, I don't know much about their language.
It looks a most professional telescope,
and yet you tell me it is made out of odds and ends.
I find that hard to believe!
That's right, everything you see was obtained from a scrap yard.
The main difficulty, funnily enough, was to keep the rust down.
Obviously, it is all made of scrap, and rust has to be removed
before you can begin treating the whole thing to paint it.
I have rust problems as well.
The tube in my telescope is actually wooden, but the mounting
is mainly metal, of course,
and I'm only 500 yards from the sea, so I can sympathise.
THEY LAUGH
The great Sir Patrick Moore there, but interestingly,
we were talking earlier about professional scientists
and people like Feynman, but also professional scientists
presenting programmes.
Patrick Moore is the embodiment of an amateur.
Isn't he? Yes, absolutely. It's astonishing.
I mean, he played the xylophone, he was...
Of course, he was a pilot in the war. Yes.
In the Second World War, navigator and all of that.
An astonishing guy all round,
but he has the ingredient also of being selfless.
I was watching him in a studio once.
(AS SIR PATRICK MOORE) "Hello, Brian, hello, Brian!"
He said, "I want to do this about Barnard's Star...
"We've lost it again, oh, come, come, come!
"Let's get on with it! We're losing time, I want to make an episode."
"We're going to lose it. A very important point. You're back!
"Ladies and gentlemen, let me point this out..."
He was so intent on educating people and telling people
about the magic of the universe. Patrick just wasn't...
He was a servant, a total servant. Yes.
It made him so wonderfully free.
That is the great thing about the Sky At Night, I think.
It's an amateur astronomy programme.
It'd often have professionals on it. Yes.
Whilst we are talking about science broadcasting,
let's have a look at, for me,
the greatest science presenter who wasn't actually a scientist.
Good evening.
It's James Burke.
I'm going, I'm going,
it's fantastic! It's unbelievable!
It's the most extraordinary feeling.
I can... I can't really control myself.
You should see the crew that are filming me, what they're up to.
MUSIC: The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss
What goes up tends to come down.
GUNSHOT
If you fire with sufficient power,
the rocket will come down halfway across the world, but at an angle.
Reach a speed of over 17,000 miles an hour, and the rocket will fall,
but miss the Earth, and go on missing it, like this.
Next you boost your speed to over 25,000 miles an hour,
and the rocket will follow a new orbit,
still trying to fall to Earth but going out over 250,000 miles
into space before doing so, like this.
If the rocket is intercepted at this point by the moon,
then the moon's gravitational field will attract the rocket
just enough to change its orbit, swing it round the back of the moon
and head to Earth.
A touch on the brake pedal, as it were, at the right moment,
and you stay in orbit round the Moon.
Another touch and you land.
All you have to do have to be able to do that is one of these.
A Saturn V.
MUSIC: O Fortuna by Carl Orff
If there was ever a piece of technology that appealed
to the emotions, it was the Saturn V lifting off on that July morning
in 1965, heading for the moon.
Remember?
I'm as emotional as anybody else. I won't forget it.
# Sors salutis
# Et virtutis
# Michi nunc contraria
# Est affectus
# Et defectus
# Semper in angaria
# Hac in hora
# Sine mora
# Corde pulsum tangite
# Quod per sortem
# Sternit fortem
# Mecum omnes plangite! #
The trouble was, that thing took off as much on euphoria
as on rocket fuel.
Because the public understood it as a great adventure,
and how many great adventures are you going to pay for
when the plot's the same every time?
So the taxpayer lost interest, and Apollo became this.
And before you say "Good - waste of money",
in the same period,
American women spent the same amount of money on cosmetics.
It was lack of understanding of the scientific reason behind Apollo
that killed it.
That, and the desire we all seem to have developed for novelty.
That's one of the effects of living with a high rate of change
like we do, that desire for novelty.
But it carries a price.
More novelty, less understanding.
More wrong attitudes towards things like what happened here.
We've arrived at a point where, as somebody said,
if you understand something today, it must be obsolete.
The thing I tend to feel about your programmes... Yes?
I always feel, with a TV programme or a lecture situation,
preparation is tremendously important,
but it always seems to me that if that preparation
seems to revolve around gimmicky renderings of information,
it almost... It's rather like a pop tune, right?
You hear the hook line but not necessarily the song.
Don't you feel that's true?
Are you saying that the work I do is like pop and not like Beethoven?
I'm saying that your programmes revolve around gimmicks so much
that people notice the gimmicks and not the information.
Name one.
Like you rushing around with a hammer
and smashing up washing machines. I mean, people remember that,
they don't remember why you were doing it.
I credit people with more intelligence than you do, then.
Because I think they do recall that.
As a programme, as it happens, people, a couple of months later,
they remember one thing, right?
How much do you want them to remember?
I'd like them to remember the gist of the programme,
and they don't seem to remember the gist.
They seem to remember the incidents where you're being rather...
I don't mean to be offensive. No, go ahead, go ahead.
I don't mean to be offensive. The way you're being melodramatic
in the way you approach your subject. How would you do it?
I just feel if it revolves around gimmicks, people will watch it
for the gimmicks and not for the information, that's what I feel.
Do you think more people would be interested in a programme
about probability and mathematics if I started by saying, "0 to 1,
"how many numbers between 0 and 1? There are an infinite
"number of numbers and integers," and so on, or if I flipped a coin
and said, "How do you know it's going to be one or the other?"
I mean, surely, it's no more than a key.
Gimmicky or not, I think what I'm trying to do is teach.
I'm trying to get people stimulated by the excitement of knowledge
because knowledge is power.
Is that what you see yourself as, then -
a teacher rather than a presenter, historian, scientist or whatever?
That's all I've ever been. Yes, that's all I've ever been.
Art, philosophy, politics, music, literature
are interpretations of the world.
They tell you more about the guy who's talking
than about the world he's talking about.
Second-hand views of the world,
made third-hand by your interpretation of them.
Things like that, as opposed to this.
Know what it is?
It's a bunch of amino acids,
the stuff that goes to build up a worm or a geranium...
or you.
This stuff's easier to take, isn't it?
Understandable. It's got people in it.
This, scientific knowledge, is hard to take,
because it removes the reassuring crutches of opinion, ideology,
and leaves only what is demonstrably true about the world.
I find that wonderful. Yes.
And what's interesting about James Burke...
I personally, actually, for me,
he's the best, technically, the best science presenter I have seen,
as I remember.
We all have opinions on that.
But what's interesting about him, first of all,
he was an English lecturer, and you see that.
I'm going to show one of the films later, it's one of my choices,
is one of James Burke's documentaries.
I actually disagree with some of what he says in the documentary
because I find it objectionably postmodern
and I don't like postmodernism at all.
No, he's a bit relativistic, isn't he?
Yeah, but he's a powerful intellect
and he offers his opinion.
What do you think?
We saw those clips there, it's different to what we see today.
Again, it's going back to that polemical style,
but it's his view.
I think all of the communicators we've seen,
some of them are scientists,
some of them have a non-scientific background,
but I think of all them, he is my favourite,
and I think it's because
he seems to be having a conversation with his audience,
and he's also not ashamed of getting into
interesting philosophical arguments
and describing interesting philosophical positions,
so I think it's great, yeah, I do like it.
But I agree with you, I don't think that just because you disagree
with some of what he says means that he's not a good communicator.
Do you remember Burke? Yes, big fan, like yourself.
He didn't act at all, as you were saying.
He was completely, wonderfully natural,
but had this tremendous intellect you always felt all the time.
But yet he could relate to the public, couldn't he? He simplified.
He never underestimated simplicity, did he?
And what do you think about his reaction there to that challenge?
I was watching it, thinking, "I'd welcome that."
I rarely...
We don't get the chance to sit in a studio
and take questions from people, and you must be the same as me.
You have people who like your work and you have people who say...
As they were doing to James Burke,
it's almost impossible to imagine to James Burke, saying,
"You've dumbed this down, it's full of gimmicks."
Actually, to me now, when I get that kind of thing, it's about me
not being anywhere near as full of information in my programmes
as James Burke's were.
It's interesting to see someone having a go at James.
Would you welcome that? Do you get a lot of that?
Yes, I suppose it does tend to be
more criticism through social media, and some of it can be...
I mean, I felt that was quite, in a way, nasty. Yes.
I thought the young guy that was criticising James Burke
was quite arrogant, actually,
and also talking about him being gimmicky
whilst wearing a cravat I thought was quite interesting!
Yeah, the confidence.
In terms of criticism, that Burke hadn't thought about
how he was getting his message across. And occasionally,
I don't know whether you've had that but I've had certainly had
those kind of criticisms where people say, "You haven't thought
"about how this message is coming across
"or how much content there is."
And I don't think they realise
quite how much goes into making a television documentary
and quite how much thought does go in,
so even if they might not agree with the outcome of it,
and think we have gone into too much detail or too little detail
or it's too gimmicky or it's not gimmicky enough, it is important,
I think, that people understand that thought has gone into it.
It's a difficult challenge, isn't it?
There's a large audience that you'd like to get to.
I think it is actually easier to make extremely complicated
scientific documentaries than it is to make one with broad appeal. Yes.
I think what's really brave about these series, though, is that they
are long series, and we don't see much of that going on nowadays so...
13 episodes was the standard form.
When I watch those older clips,
I do envy the freedom of James Burke
and of Bronowski and of Sagan.
And, actually, I think that's probably our fault,
because when I watch that, I think, "I COULD do more of that."
No-one's going to stop me.
I do think there are things we can learn from looking at these
documentaries and partly by turning the lens on ourselves.
I'm also slightly concerned that we've had a lot of very good
science programming, especially on the BBC, in recent years,
and I really hope that we're not riding the crest of a wave
and we're going to start dipping down again.
You know, there's been an impact in terms of children
being interested in science, and applications to university,
particularly to study things like physics,
and so I don't want that to change,
I don't want this to be a cyclical phenomenon.
Yes, we don't want it to go out of fashion
and gardening programmes to come back in again,
or home improvement to make a comeback!
I do think we need to link in with other media better as well,
so I think that we probably need to view television programmes
as something which light the fire,
which get people interested, and they always have been that,
so there have been books to read beyond Carl Sagan's Cosmos,
and we should be linking much more effectively
and using the internet more effectively and linking people
into original sources of scientific research as well.
Yeah, I agree with you completely.
I think television should be seen as part of the education system.
In particular, the BBC, because what is it?
It's a publicly funded broadcaster. Absolutely.
I am a child of the BBC. Absolutely.
I think the answer to your question is
I don't see how the wave can drop as long as the BBC remembers
that its job is to keep...
science, but also history and all academic disciplines
up at the top of the wave.
Are you optimistic about our trajectory
at the moment as a civilisation?
I do think it's interesting,
particularly when we watch episode one of Cosmos this evening,
you'll see that it's suffused with the..
It's not long after the Cuban Missile Crisis,
it's right at the heart of the Cold War,
and you'll see there's a darkness to it, there's a sense of threat
to it, and Sagan almost pleading with the audience,
"just this tiny speck",
and he was always referring to the armies and the generals
that march around on this speck, claiming parts of it temporarily.
We don't see that much any more, perhaps because we feel more secure,
but do you think we're on the right trajectory?
I think so, and I think that when you look at the history of science
together with the history of society,
that, you know, very clearly what we see
is the transformative power of science.
If you look at the whole trajectory, I think what you can do is,
with hindsight, look back on it and say,
"Actually, "what we have done, using science,
"is to improve human life immeasurably."
We have extended our lives,
we have improved the quality of our lives,
we have drastically reduced childhood mortality
in developed countries where we can get the science
and use it to its best effect.
And I think that then we have a moral responsibility
to carry on doing that.
It hasn't stopped. We can carry on improving life.
I personally feel that television,
because it's the most important cultural medium,
in the sense that it reaches the widest number of people,
then I think it has a responsibility
to say the things that you have just said, quite loudly.
Do you think...
First of all, do you think it does have a responsibility
and do you think it takes that responsibility seriously enough?
It has a huge responsibility because, you know, still in this
era of the internet, television is an extremely powerful tool.
As a scientist, I know about my own narrow field
but I rely on television to tell me, to share with me,
the stories from the rest of science.
Well, all that remains is for me to thank Brian Blessed.
Thank you, Brian.
And Alice. And we've come to a conclusion, I think,
which is that we need more science and more science fiction
on television, and we pledge to make it happen.
Good night.
# Science is real
# Science is re-e-e-eal
# Science is real. #
GORDON'S ALIVE!
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd