You know documentaries have fallen into a sorry state of existence when their primary draw is the destruction of expensive objects just to fill up a few minutes (or even seconds) or airtime. I haven't seen the whole documentary, but the first installment of the BBC's The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs thought it would be fun to crunch up a car;
Of course, that clip is essentially a rip-off of a scene from the second Jurassic Park film, The Lost World;
The worst representations of the "destructive documentary," however, can be found in the Discovery Channel's "Animal Face Off" series. In these programs two animals are selected to combat each other and a scientist represents each side, almost like a rep for a pro wrestler. Mechanical models with glowing red eyes are created (a trend the Discovery Channel started with the equally vapid and gratuitous documentary "Anatomy of a Shark Bite") and a fight scene is scripted, although which ever animal wins is largely up to the whims of the people producing the show and not anything scientific. There is little, if any, scientific value in the show (whatever few facts there are are recycled over and over again in a sensationalist fashion), and I don't understand how so many installments were ordered for broadcast. Here's the "death match" from the lion vs. crocodile show;
Interestingly enough, confrontations between lions and Nile crocodiles do occur from time to time, but such meetings don't bear much resemblance to the combat depicted on basic cable;
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For someone interested in being part of the solution to these types of programs, please consider this master's program: http://naturefilm.montana.edu/index.php
I am a former student of this program, and think it does an excellent job of putting students in a position to make responsible science films. It is aimed at people with science backgrounds.
It's probably worth considering for someone who doesn't want to pursue a graduate degree in her major, but still wants to be involved with science somehow.
Ugh, I despised Animal Face-Off AND The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs. Both shows seemed to be prime symptoms of a major problem Discovery Channel had in the early-mid 2000s: airing a lot of sensationalist stories with little research and trying to pass them off as "real, scientific discovery." After all, it was around this time that Jack Horner and his theropod ineptitude (T.rex as the bumbling retard of the Animal Kingdom, Spinosaurus as some sort of ultra-nimble, mass-murdering ultrapredator, etc.) got its biggest voice. And where did that voice come from? Endless Discovery Channel specials devoted to his nonsense between about 1999 and 2003, purely because it was sensational and counterintuitive, and nevermind the fact that it was all a complete crock with little real research behind it (hey, if I have a question about hadrosaurs, Horner's the first guy I'd go to, but he's the very absolute last person that should be touted as any sort of theropod "authority").
Animal Face-Off was very much in the same vein of the Horner specials. It was always the animal with the flashiest gimmicks that won. And speaking as someone who graduated college with a degree in computer animation, the CG used in the show was absolutely vile. I remember a clear example where one fight had Predator A knocked down by Predator B (I forget the exact animals, but I think it was either lion and tiger or wolf and cougar). Predator A clearly landed IN FRONT of Predator B, but for whatever reason, the very next shot had Predator B having to turn around and walk back over to Predator A to finish it off (I should point out that the initial hit was not a very hard one at all, and yet they had Predator A just laying there derelict for several seconds just waiting to be killed...WTF!?). Awful, awful work, and I'm glad the show got canned.
By the way, if you want the ultimate eye-rolling knee-slapper, I suggest you check out the Truth About Killer Dinosaurs special that pits Ankylosaurus against Velociraptor. They pretty much determine in the first ten minutes that Velociraptor is toast, but continue to ham up the next fifty minutes blatantly pretending like he really might have a chance, and the whole thing is just positively hilarious (if not more than a bit sad at the same time).
There is also this short video of a tiger tackling a large (what appeart o me to be a) mugger crocodile. The tiger comes out on top farmore convincingly that I would have imagined.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7dazPp20d8
Agreed, the CGI was godawful. The show would go on and on and on about fang length, bite pressure, etc. -- yet never once was there any mention of realistic aggression behavior, let alone an attempt to program it into those dubious simulations. And the contest would hinge upon one single match, which (we were assured) would determine who was the Top Predator.
The whole thing reeked of complete, utter, breathtaking contempt for viewers. "We know you're too stupid and have too short an attention span to understand any real science, so we'll just give you this sensationalistic crap, and you can kid yourself that you're actually watching a documentary."
Most Discovery Channel and History Channel shows revolve around the concept of "we're going to make an incredibly simple determination, but somehow stretch it out over an hour." I watched a "documentary" at the gym on the History Channel about whether or not a ballista killed a man in some war.
After they matched the hole in the skull with the spear tip, that was pretty much it, but then they built an ancient Roman ballista and made a speartip in a kiln and all sorts of complicated crap. And in the end? YES, the ballista killed him...which we knew halfway through the show.