SCIENCE WATCH: Lesley Cowling
IF you haven’t mastered the technology of your video machine yet, now is the time to learn how to set record. December features a slew of science and technology documentaries on SABC3, as the channel needs to screen material it acquired as NNTV before the licences to broadcast them run out. This means many good shows are being run at inaccessible times, like early afternoons or over the holidays.
One of these is a stunning documentary that would make even the most suspicious parent interested in Video Games. Screened on December 17 at 2pm, it mimics the games it examines with fast-moving images and rhythmic editing.
The camera moves between the inventors, the enthusiasts and the games themselves, all to hypnotic background music.
The sophistication of the technology behind these “time-wasters” is revealed, as well as the operations of the big game companies.
Did you know, for example, that Nintendo runs a helpline that receives about 170 000 calls a week? And that their patient telephone personnel have to learn the intricacies of about 800 games so that they can get frustrated players out of dungeons or the clutches of monsters?
* The intricacies of the natural world are the subject of Supersense, being rerun on Sundays at 2pm. If you didn’t catch it the first time, don’t miss this popular programme that literally gives you a bird’s (and other animals’) eye view on life.
The technology is mostly hidden, but it allows you to watch birds in flight from the perspective of a fellow traveller, or burrow into the tunnels of mole rats to watch the little beasts play out their roles in a sophisticated but restrictive community.
* There’s more of the genre Gerald Durrell made popular, this time with the even more popular David Attenborough. He’s in the Antarctic, at 6pm on Mondays, taking a look at the place where half the world’s seals congregate and penguins survive the cold in their natty-looking suits. Life in the Freezer was made for the BBC and has won many awards, including an Emmy.
* Rivalling the BBC for rich historical drama is The Sound and the Silence, a four- part mini-series made in Canada about the life of Alexander Graham Bell. On Wednesdays at 7pm, it combines the story of Bell’s life with a depiction of the scientific ideas current in the Victorian times.
* Myths, Mysteries and Mysticism, on Tuesdays at 10.15pm, uses modern technology to examine questions that still puzzle us today. The series can’t answer all the questions, but provides the latest and liveliest debates.