Last Night’s TV: Brave New World with Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking in
his extraordinary new science series
Channel 4 Alex Hardy October 18 2011
12:01AM Unfeasible plot twists, a filmic score and trips to galaxies far
away: is this a science show or a sci-fi blockbuster?
Brave New World with
Stephen Hawking Channel 4
Brave New World: there’s a beefy title —
epic, filmic and loaded with expectation. And how Stephen Hawking and co
delivered. This was a science show with a cast and unfeasible plot twists worthy
of a sci-fi blockbuster. We met robots who learn and travelled to galaxies far,
far away. It was so filmic that it wrote a strapline for its own poster:
“Machines give us the power to be better than we are”, the voiceover soundbite
announced. Its score was that of a movie, all strings, booms and dramatic
emphasis — now there’s something to wind up science-doc purists. It even made me
cry filmic tears; ones that slowly gather in the corner of your eyes and
synchronise themselves with the swell of the music. Having a silent cry as a
paralysed woman stood up and walked: what could be more filmic than
that?
That she could move courtesy of an exoskeleton — an electronic leg
frame attached to her own — made her literally alive with science; as were
others in this film, metaphorically. The physicist Kathy Sykes was saucer-eyed
and open-mouthed with fear and excitement as she was whisked about in a
driverless car. Equally astounding — terrifying? — were the little robots with
learning patterns like children’s. The agility with which their eyes traced new
objects; their white Casper-like faces, lit by moving eyebrows that are really
no more sophisticated than emoticons, or the crude pencillings-on that old
ladies resort to. You can bet those brows will get much cleverer very
soon.
Hawking and his team carefully made linkages to a real, human future.
Driverless cars could mean fewer roads, and the exoskeleton’s superhuman
strength could impact on anything from warfare to housebuilding. This
thoughtfulness was no doubt enhanced by Hawking, who is defined not only by his
extraordinary brain but by the machines that give him voice and movement. This
was a spectacular expression of the capabilities of science, and one that will
live with me for a long time, like the moment when Tomorrow’s World introduced
us to that mouse with a human ear grafted onto its back; or when Doc Brown and
Marty McFly got the DeLorean to take flight.
AFFILIATIONS
American
Federation of Musicians
Society
of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of
Canada
Société
du droit de reproduction des auteurs
compositeurs et éditeurs du Canada inc.
Société
professionnelle des auteurs et des compositeurs
du Québec
