My background is in paleontology, so theoretically this show should be right up my alley. It was a pleasant watch with my wife and I appreciated that it did not outstay its welcome. There wasn't anything particularly remarkable about Prehistoric Planet. It clearly is trying to follow in the footsteps of Walking with Dinosaurs, but that show was a technical marvel with good music and it brought many interesting species to life for the first time. Here, we see many animals that have been visualized in CGI time and time again. The show tries to show us new sides to these animals, but none of them particularly grabbed me. It just seemed fairly generic.

What nudged this down to a 5/10 instead of a 6/10 for me was the science. I have no doubt that this show is well-meaning and based on good data. But as a science-minded individual, I was really here to learn about what I have missed in the last 8 years since I stopped studying paleontology. The show presents itself as a sort of nature documentary made for casual viewers rather than people interested in zoology and science. I would have liked the show to make clear distinctions between portrayals that were based on hard science; those that were inferred based on the behaviors of related animals like birds or crocodiles; and speculative "what ifs" that just let us flesh out the animals and imagine what they were MAYBE like when they were alive. The show doesn't make any such distinction, and there were multiple moments where my wife and I looked at each other and remarked, "There's no way we have evidence for that!"

Each episode has a companion short that explains some of the science behind the episode, which is welcome, but it only focuses on one single factoid per episode. Some of them proved me wrong and showed we absolutely had evidence for the thing that raised my eyebrows, but I am wondering why everything in the show can't be fact-checked like this? I'm totally happy and fine with "what ifs," but I came to the show to learn and I feel like I am walking away not knowing what was fact and what was fiction.

So in the end, I feel like I learned nothing!