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A Fantasy Made Real : The Evolution of the Subjunctive Documentary on U.S. Cable Science Channels
Anneke M. Metz Television New Media 2008 9: 333 originally published online 3 March 2008 DOI: 10.1177/1527476408315117 The online version of this article can be found at: http://tvn.sagepub.com/content/9/4/333

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A Fantasy Made Real

The Evolution of the Subjunctive Documentary on U.S. Cable Science Channels
Anneke M. Metz
Montana State University

Television & New Media Volume 9 Number 4 July 2008 333-348 2008 Sage Publications 10.1177/1527476408315117 http://tvnm.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

The need for drama in the contemporary television science documentary, coupled with the advent of computer-generated imaging (CGI) technology, has led to the development of increasingly fiction-driven science documentary, specifically on cable outlets such as the Discovery suite channels and National Geographic. While subjunctive documentary shows such as Walking with Dinosaurs initially used CGI technology to illustrate scientists best understanding of Earth prehistory, the use of CGI has quickly escalated to the animation of purely fantastical life forms. This trend has resulted in a baroque subjunctive documentary form that has evacuated any possibility of serious science documentary on cable channels devoted to science programming. Keywords: television; documentary; Discovery Channel; subjunctive; science fiction; animation

cience documentary has been broadcast on television for well over half a century. From nature programs created by David Attenborough for the BBC as early as 1954 and the Public Broadcasting Services NOVA, which debuted in 1974, to the programming on a number of science-oriented cable channels today, science and nature documentaries have been part of the television landscape nearly since the advent of widespread broadcast television. The Discovery Channel launched in 1985 on cable channels in the United States. Since that time, the Discovery Corporation has expanded to a suite of channels, including the Science Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery Health, The Learning Channel (TLC), and the Travel Channel. In addition, the National Geographic Channel launched in the United States in 2001, and today, A&E Television Networks History Channel also provides some outlet for science-themed history programming. This explosion of outlets for science programming has led to a shortage of compelling, narrative programming that will draw in viewers in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
Authors Note: The author thanks Walter Metz for useful discussions regarding subjunctive documentary and the anonymous reviewer(s) for pointed and useful critique during manuscript review. 333

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As I will demonstrate in this article, the need for drama in science documentary, coupled with the advent of computer-generated imaging (CGI) technology, has led to the development of almost completely fiction-driven science documentary, specifically on cable outlets such as the Discovery suite channels and National Geographic. From the seminal CGI Walking with . . . series, including Walking with Dinosaurs (WWD; Discovery 1999) and its descendants (Walking with Prehistoric Beasts 2001; Walking with Cavemen 2003) to more recent CGI marvels such as Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real (Discovery 2004) and Alien Planet (Discovery 2005), the television documentary has strayed into a highly fictive, and problematic, territory. These subjunctive documentaries are profoundly aggressive in their insistence that the fictions they are documenting not only could be real but truly are real, because CGI has made them so. In a matter of years, the form has matured quickly, from using CGI as an illustrative tool to creating images so compelling that the need to attend to the factual basis underlying the image has become secondary. In the current article, I explore the particular problematics of this subjunctive documentary form, in particular its propensity to blur the distinction between scientific fact and fantasy, current knowledge and future speculation, serious documentary and hoaxing, and scientific and entertainment expertise. These elements have their roots in televised documentary that has always been constructed to not only inform but to entertain. In Televisions NOVA and the Construction of Scientific Truth, Susanna Hornig (1990) analyses the way in which the long-running PBS science documentary program NOVA positions scientists as elite experts, while concurrently employing dramatic license to entertain viewers. The show, she argues, fails in its stated mission to demystify science. Instead, it provides noncontroversial entertainment for an elite public clientele whose monetary support is needed to keep PBS on the air. Furthermore, Hornig suggests that the propping up of the scientific expert also flatters the scientific community, as such good relations are needed to ensure continued access of NOVAs journalists to scientists who might otherwise eschew publicity. She portrays science as appropriately serving industry, using as an example the 1988 NOVA program The Race for the Superconductor, which suggests the scientific study of superconducting materials will be a key to our electronics and computing industries technological supremacy. A recent NOVA indicates that this tradition of supporting the goals of commerce and industry continues in the respected documentary series. The 2006 two-hour special, Artic Passage, retraces the centuries-long struggle to map and navigate a northwest passage, a shipping route from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the iceladen Arctic waters north of Canada. The hoped-for trade route would have shaved months off the journey to China, which was especially arduous before the creation of the Panama Canal. As in the superconductor program, NOVA forwards the corporate-friendly stance that scientific exploration plays its proper role when it strives to improve the flow of international business.

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The increasing number of commercial cable science channels supported by cable/satellite subscribers and advertising dollars has created a marketplace for subscriber and corporate-friendly science documentary. Given the need for such sciencethemed edutainment, it is little wonder that the advent of CGI has resulted in a subjunctive documentary form, the documentary of that which could be or might have been. In the new millennium, subjunctive documentaries have become prevalent on these cable science channels, programming outlets that appear particularly prone to mixing science fiction and science fact. With some exemplars of the form, it has become nearly impossible for viewers without prior knowledge to disentangle factual and fictional details while watching shows on channels purportedly dedicated to science programming. Because any special effects imagery is by definition a fiction (CGI is, after all, just a highly sophisticated cartoon), it is not surprising that subjunctive documentary has its roots not only in science edutainment but in science fiction. In A Bone of Contention: Documenting the Prehistoric Subject, James M. Moran (1999) notes that the intersection of science documentary and science fiction occurs as early as Stanley Kubricks 1968 classic science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film was considered by many in the scientific community to be the finest representation of prehistoric man yet captured on celluloid. Indeed, Kubrick took pains to meticulously research the current scientific understanding of human evolution in creating the Dawn of Man prologue. Given that there can be no photographic evidence of history that predates the camera, Moran concludes:
The lesson of 2001 may be that, rather than relegate the prehistoric subject inevitably to the genre of science fiction because current strategies cannot accommodate its excess, documentary may do well to revise its practice to include special effects, if for no reason other than that they offer to human view a document of the unseen but not unreal. (p. 260)

For Moran, then, dramatizations (given that they are scientifically informed) can serve as proper footage in the documentary sense, providing an index of real events where no direct photographic evidence can ever be possible. Moran goes on to analyze the Mr. DNA short that was used both diegetically within in the film Jurassic Park and later in a Behind the Scenes at Jurassic Park exhibit created at the Universal Studios theme park. He suggests that while the short (a cartoon showing how dinosaurs were cloned using DNA from ancient insects preserved in amber) served as a tool of fiction within the film, it ends up serving a very different purpose, that of education, in the Universal Studios attraction. In the latter, the short is used to suggest that such a cloning procedure (while still not realized in the real world) rests on real scientific principles and could be used to bring back dinosaurs in the future. It is the use of real science in the science fiction films 2001: A Space Odyssey and in Jurassic Park that Moran notes constitutes documentary in the subjunctive mode.

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While Moran uses the idea of the subjunctive documentary to refer to a realistic depiction of natural history within fictional narratives such as those found in the science fiction film, Mark J. P. Wolf (1999), in his essay Subjunctive Documentary: Computer Imaging and Simulation, extends this term to refer to the use of such created images in documentary film itself:
Whereas most documentaries are concerned with documenting events that have happened in the past, and attempt to make photographic records of them, computer imaging and simulation are concerned with what could be, would be or might have been: they form a subgenre of documentary we might call subjunctive documentary, following the use of the term subjunctive as a grammatical tense. (p. 274)

In grappling with CGI in documentary, both authors recognize that computer simulation can substitute for traditional film footage. Moran (1999) suggests that what documentaries of the prehistoric subject are most concerned with, finally, is representing virtual reality, whose claims to credibility must lie outside the technology producing it (p. 270). For Moran, then, CGI evidence is not much different than more traditional photographic evidence, because credibility comes from the science itself, not its representation. Wolf (1999) finds the potential of subjunctive documentary to concretiz[e] the imaginary or the speculatory (p. 290) more problematic but also recognizes that in other areas of culture, computer simulations are accepted as real even when they involve life-and-death situations (pilots obtaining flight certifications by training in simulators, doctors training for surgery on digital torsos, and the like). With respect to CGI in documentary film, then, Wolf suggests that CGI documentaries ought better to be termed nonfiction films. However, as I will argue in this article, the subjunctive documentary has evolved to the point that scientific credibility itself has become fictionalized. Under such circumstances, the notion of finding credibility . . . outside the technology can no longer apply, and labeling such films nonfiction gives them a scientific sanction that is neither deserved nor appropriate.

Testimony: The Re-Creation of Real Witnesses

CGI technology has made subjunctive documentaries possible because it renders images so realistic that there is no telling whether the subject in question was actually photographed directly (thus providing a direct indexical linkage to the subject) or computer generated (with the concomitant possibility that what is depicted is pure fiction). Despite his stance that CGI does not preclude scientifically accurate documentaries, for Wolf, it is clear that this ability to simulate reality will also allow CGI to document possibilities or probabilities instead of actualities. The possibility that recreations can mislead, rather than enhance, understanding in a documentary predates the advent of CGI. In Blurred Boundaries, Bill Nichols (1994)

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discusses the link between reenactment and spoken testimony in documentary, noting that reenactments can present a legitimate way to address what is not available for representation in the here and now (p. 4). But because figures recorded on film in reenactment are simulacra, Nichols also notes:
Spoken testimony came to be seen as an antidote for the body too many problem of reenactment (the bodies of those in the reenactment were extras, never matching the historical bodies they represented). Social actors, witnesses, could speak now about what they know of historical events. (p. 4)

Spoken testimony by actual witnesses can provide a powerful legitimacy to documentarya force of reason from one who was there, who is not simulated or interpreted by another. In the subjunctive documentaries seen on science cable channels, however, this distinction breaks down. Witnesses are created via CGI technology, and spoken testimony is co-opted to legitimize the fictional reality of the show. WWD (1999; originally aired April 18, 2000 on the Discovery Channel) uses fictional storylines of various individual dinosaurs (filmed in their native habitat via CGI technology) to represent abstract interpretations of scientific evidence as concrete examples of observable phenomena. The final effect is that of a standard wildlife documentary, complete with animal footage, sound bytes from scientists, and Voice of God narration that present to the spectator the truth about dinosaurs in their habitat. It is precisely such use of CGI, as part of a more complete package of scientific knowledge, that Moran presciently advocated when he wrote in his 1999 article that the subjunctive documentary of the prehistoric subject . . . must not resist the adaptation of new technologies consonant with paleontologys new discoveries (p. 269). Yet the use of CGI almost immediately begins to blur the boundaries between CGI as illustrative technique and as tool to construct scientific claims. The production of WWD was accompanied by The Making of Walking with Dinosaurs (1999), a behind-the-scenes look at its computer animation. The advertisements for the Making of special, shown during WWD, included tongue-in-cheek outtakes of a T-rex acting for a camera crew and an animator having a conversation with a very British velociraptor posing for a CGI drawing. While the T-rex only roars on cue, the erudite velociraptor, dangling a cigarette between his claws, muses about the difficulty of working with animators. Here, the claim made by Nichols that spoken testimony provides that concrete bedrock of documentary truth, more reliable than re-creation, begins to break down. What are viewers to make of spoken testimony that comes from the re-creation itself? While this example from 1999 is an animator in-joke, re-created spoken testimony is used much more seriously in Pre-Human: Riddle of the Skull (Science Channel 2006), where it provides the core narrative to document an important anthropological find. This show recounts the 2002 discovery in Chad of a seven-million-year-old skull believed to be a link between chimpanzees and Australopithecus afarensis (whose

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most famous exemplar is the 3.2-million-year-old skeleton more commonly known as Lucy). The documentary presents steps taken by scientists to recreate the animals form from the fossil evidence and uses CGI dramatizations of the creatures behaviors to illustrate how the animal must have lived. While such elements are by 2006 standard fare for a nature film, what makes this documentary noteworthy is that it is hosted by the skull itself. Here, the scientific data have become fully anthropomorphized, serving as the most authentic and knowledgeable narrator possible, as the skulls testimony lends scientific credence to the data presented. The Sahelanthropus tchandensis skull, nicknamed Toumai, is imagined (like WWDs erudite velociraptor) as a British intellectual. Throughout the show, Toumai alternately poses philosophical questions to himself such as Who am I? and explains the technical details of tests performed on himself/the skull as scientists attempt to determine more about their find. The processes used to bring the skull back to life are thus experienced and narrated by the skull itself, generating a purely speculative and circular chain of evidence. Toumai explains a scientific process, which jogs his memories of the creatures life seven million years ago, but of course, the spoken testimony of Toumais memory is a script written by the filmmakers, based on what the scientists believe they know from analysis of the skull. The memories are not organic and yet are used to prove the very scientific evidence that created them in the first place. The S. tchadensis skull is fictionalized as a verbal, sophisticated, white British human. The British accent, used to provide cultural credibility by suggesting distance from the United States and thus authority, is problematic. It is not a scientifically correct depiction of the cognitive or verbal ability of the prehuman and as such unnecessarily anthropomorphizes this anthropological artifact, of which the scientific community actually knows very little. Coding S. tchadensis as British is also disturbing because it suggests that the original humans in Africa were indeed British, legitimizing their destructive colonialist engagements with Africa in much more recent history. The narrator that gives voice to the skull is also a man, ostensibly confirming for the viewer that the prehuman remains are that of a male. The disagreement within the scientific community regarding the gender of the specimen (Noble 2002) is never mentioned in the documentary, and the piece thus too easily brings male authority, along with British authority to bear on what would otherwise necessarily be characterized as a poorly understood anthropological find.

Hoaxing: The Absolutely Real Documentary of Complete Fiction

Cable subjunctive documentary is not limited to CGI nature films of now extinct prehistoric beasts, such as the dinosaurs, mammoths, saber-toothed tigers of the Walking With . . . documentary series, or even of seven-million-year-old prehumans. Mythical or imaginary life forms such as dragons and extraterrestrials have also become staple subjects. Hallmarks of these subjunctive works include expert

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testimonials that attest to the veracity of the fictional organism and the fictionalization of the scientific process of discovery itself. This type of documentary moves beyond Morans vision of CGI as a tool in documenting prehistory and also shatters Wolfs notion that documentary using CGI can properly be called nonfiction. To more fully understand the birth of these highly speculative docudramas, it is appropriate to start with Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction, a 1995 Fox documentary that purportedly investigates real evidence of an alien crash landing on U.S. soil in 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico. With a format featuring sensationalist drama masquerading as a balanced scientific inquiry, it provides an early template for the sensibility of the cable subjunctive documentary to come for two reasons: the show relies heavily on footage that may or may not have been factual evidence, and science fiction and science become deeply intertwined. Here, science fiction moves out of the realm of fantasy and becomes integral to programming that is offered (either disingenuously or tongue-in-cheekthere is no way for the viewer to tell) as serious documentary. Alien Autopsy was touted as an investigation into the authenticity of a film ostensibly showing the autopsy of an alien by U.S. military medical personnel. The film was hailed (at least by show host Jonathan Frakes, an actor from the Star Trek science fiction television and film series) to be as important as the Zapruder film. Snippets of the seventeen-minute, grainy black-and-white reel, as well as the spoken testimony of the children of Roswell eyewitnesses and of several scientific and special effects experts who validate the alien films authenticity, provide evidence that the U.S. government has incontrovertible proof of life from outer space hidden away at a top-secret military base. It is not mentioned that the autopsy reel was not taken seriously by any mainstream scientists nor that the footage was denounced even by investigators who do believe aliens landed at Roswell. Despite these shortcomings, Alien Autopsy found a following among millions of UFO enthusiasts (Gallup Poll results from 1978 to 1996 consistently show that between 47 percent and 57 percent of Americans believe in the existence of UFOs; Gallup 1999), who considered it serious documentary evidence of an Area 51 cover-up (Corliss 1995). While standing by its documentary when it aired in 1995, Fox network executives finally admitted in 1998 that the autopsy film was a hoax, albeit just in time to publicize the new Fox special Worlds Greatest Hoaxes: Secrets Finally Revealed, executive produced by Robert Kiviat, also creator of Alien Autopsy. The autopsy footage, supposedly the direct index, the photographic proof of alien life, turns out instead to be a manufactured dramatization of something many in our culture believe could be true. With this after-the-fact admission of the manufacture of the evidence, Alien Autopsy retroactively becomes a subjunctive documentary film. It blurs the lines between science fact and science fiction, both by using in Frakes, a science fiction actor, as an alien expert and by producing staged photographic evidence that uses science fiction special effects and draws its content from fictive conceptions of intelligent alien life. These devices, pioneered in Alien Autopsy, are found again in a subjunctive documentary produced a decade later: Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real

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(2004). This investigation into fire-breathing dragons of myth is squarely in the tradition of its Autopsy progenitor as it consciously perpetrates a hoax in pursuit of television ratings. Dragons investigates what fire-breathing dragons might be like if they had indeed lived on Earth as they do in our literature and legends. The opening titles show a painting of a Chinese dragon, as narrator Patrick Stewart (like Frakes, also of the Star Trek franchise) opines, If the stories were real, this is what wed find. Many cultures have stories about dragons. Could it be that these stories are more than myth? If dragons were real, then what were they really like? What if we found a body? The show takes as its fictional premise the discovery of a dragons body in a receding icepack by hikers in the Carpathian Mountains. This what if subjunctive documentary works hard to provide plausible scientific explanations for the dragons mythical abilities: its capacity to fly and its facility in breathing fire. It draws on separate skills found in the animal kingdom to imagineer (to borrow Disneys term for bringing to life its own cartoon-based Magic Kingdom) the anatomy and physiology of the mythical serpent. Thus, the dragons ability to create hydrogen, used both to breathe fire and to provide lift for flight, is linked to the metabolism of known hydrogen-producing microorganisms on earth, and storage of the light gas is likened to the use of swim bladders by fish. Unfortunately, although it appears to seriously explore how a dragon might actually be able to fly and breathe fire, the science showcased is dubious at best. In one scene, the scientists supposedly analyzing the gas content of a mysterious dragon organ are actually looking at a DNA (genome sequence) data printout. In another, the audience is led to believe that two special hydrogen sacs inside the dragons thorax are sufficient to provide much of the lift needed for the 900-pound dragon to fly, yet basic physics calculations make it evident that it would take two bags twenty feet in diameter to lift even half that weight. And much like the perplexingly crude autopsy performed on the 1947 Roswell creaturewhere alien organs are carelessly tossed into scrap bucketsDragons provides bizarre footage of dragon innards ripped out of a well-preserved carcass by scientists in a laboratory that looks more like a makeshift cave shelter than a twenty-first-century facility. Spoken testimony is used disingenuously in this documentary as well, via the use of a credentialed scientist, whose speculation is canonized as fact. The expertise of scientific consultant Dr. Peter Hogarth, a senior lecturer in the Department of Biology at the University of York (United Kingdom), is officially listed as tropical marine biology and mangrove ecology (University of York Communications Office 2006). While the link between Dr. Hogarths qualifications in plant ecology and any scientific, historical, or literary expertise on dragons is unclear (and never addressed in the documentary), he nonetheless testifies to the belief in dragons in the medieval period: How could you say in Western Europe in the middle ages that an elephant was a real animal and a dragon wasnt? The information that you had about them

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was the same in each case (sic). Here, the audience hears spoken testimony by a scientist (any scientist will do, it seems) that dragons were real in the middle ages, in the sense that they were a part of the popular imagination of the time. There is a certain sleight of hand in the documentary here, because this presentation suggests to the viewer that to be real (true) in the scientific sense, all that is neededas in the middle agesis that the viewers all believe. With shaky science, a bad autopsy and an earnest narrator-actor strongly associated with science fiction, Dragons, a real investigation of a creature that might have been, is the direct descendent of Alien Autopsy. However, while it can be argued that Alien Autopsy cannot be taken seriously as documentaryFox is foremost an entertainment networka viewer tuning into Animal Planet has a reasonable expectation of finding nonfiction nature programming there. Dragons should only be exhibited there if it is a bona fide nature documentary and yet contains is more science fiction than scientific evidence, a problematic hoax masquerading as a documentary steeped in empirical evidence.

Future Truth: The Documentary of Things that Will Have Been

Two subjunctive documentary entries about our first contact with life beyond earthAlien Planet (Discovery 2005) and Extraterrestrial (National Geographic 2005)attempt to persuade the audience that if their content is not true just yet, it will be soon enough. Like Dragons, these shows document fictional beings but further blur the distinction between science fiction and fact through the use of highly visible and respected scientists that attest to the validity of the shows claims, through the use of producers of science fiction as scientific experts, and by the presentation of dramatized, fabricated investigation as scientifically vetted research. While Dragons presents a world that might have been real in the past, Extraterrestrial and Alien Planet produce natural worlds that may be found in the future. Extraterrestrial introduces two fictional planets, Aurelia and Blue Moon, about which the narrator pontificates, Fantasy? Think again. Scientists believe we could find planets like these in the next few years. It is explained that NASA will soon launch the Terrestrial Planet Finder, or TPF. TPF is an orbiting satellite system designed to detect gases such as carbon dioxide, oxygen, ozone, and methane on distant worlds molecules that are associated with life or conditions conducive to the evolution of life on the only reference planet scientists have, the Earth (Platt 2004). The narrator thus encourages the viewer to recognize this fictional work as an authentic documentary of alien life. Indeed, Extraterrestrial describes life on these fictitious planets much as nature is described in classic nature films (such as the many projects done by Attenborough for the BBC). As in those films, viewers are introduced to important animals in the ecosystem via documentary footage with concomitant Voice-of-God descriptive narration.

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For instance, a CGI animation of a mudpod on Aurelia is accompanied by a narrated storyline detailing how this frog-like, six-legged creature preys on and controls the stingerfan population and also creates soil islands through its burrowing activities. Extraterrestrial thus uses a CGI vignette modeled after the traditional documentary form to prove the importance of a central species of a fictitious alien ecosystem. The similar Alien Planet, a description of life on the fictional planet Darwin IV, is also linked to NASAs planned launch of the TPF satellite grid. Both Alien Planet and Extraterrestrial use the device of having a scientific expert describe life forms on the theoretical planets as if they exist. On Alien Planet, Dr. James Kirkland (2006; the U.S. Geological Survey paleontologist who discovered the dinosaur Utah Raptor and who also provides expert commentary in WWD), describes the characteristics of Darwin IVs cheetah-like gyrosprinter: It appears that this animal may have evolved from a four-legged animal. It appears we have a fusion of the forelimbs and a fusion of the hind limbs. Truly extraordinary, something we would never predict from life on Earth. Kirkland describes this creature as if it actually exists and has been studied in detail. Such testimony is indistinguishable from his discussion of scientifically peer-reviewed dinosaur evidence on WWD. Other notable scientists such as paleontologist Jack Horner, also seen on WWD, and physicist Stephen Hawking also provide scientific testimony, lending scientific respectability to the fiction of the Darwin IV exploration. While both documentaries can be categorized as subjunctive for their use of CGI evidence, they are further remarkable for the fictionalization of the science ostensibly behind the computer-animated dramatizations. Extraterrestrial fictionalizes the scientific process of researching possible alien life itself. Computer simulations of solar system evolution form the scientific basis for the programs conjecture on alien life, but such simulations are not produced by scientists working at fantastical computer workstations that project three-dimensional holographic images of the found planets, which is how the scientists at work are portrayed in the show. Thus, before the audience even has the opportunity to learn the results of the scientists work, their methodology has been fictionalized, CGI enhanced and dramatized for viewer consumption. While the narrator discusses the real science, he never notes that what is concurrently shown on the screen has little to do with how this science is actually done. The footage of the scientists at work, while presented as the factual basis of the speculations regarding the fictional planets Aurelia and Blue Moon, is itself a dramatized reenactment. Alien Planet is a science fiction remake, an adaptation of the self-proclaimed most important travel book of the twenty-fourth century. Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV by Wayne Douglas Barlowe (1990) is itself a subjunctive documentary work, inspired by Charles Darwins voyages of exploration. Indeed, the title of Barlowes book mirrors Darwins (1909) seminal scientific treatise The Voyage of the Beagle: Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle

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Round the World (1909), and its text follows a similar journal format as the author describes his travels around the distant planet chronicling alien life. In Alien Planet, the more fantastical elements of Barlowes Expedition (fasterthan-light travel, the stewardship of humankind by a friendly race of aliens) have been removed, replaced by more plausible and distinctly human science (unmanned space probes that travel to distant planetary systems) that could be developed in the near future. Nonetheless, the flora and fauna described in the show are copied directly from Barlowes work and thus cannot have any relationship to the actual exploration of space. To quell any misgivings by the viewer that this might be the case, however, Barlowe is presented as an expert on the show through spoken testimony, professing his cooperation with NASA to ensure that his creations obey the laws of physics and chemistry. To strengthen the shows scientific validity, this assertion is immediately backed up by NASAs own scientific expert, biologist Victoria Meadows. The trend of documentaries that not only use CGI to create evidence of fictitious life forms but also provide a fictionalized science on which all the simulations are based is disquieting. For Extraterrestrial, the producers could have shown the (likely uninspiring) rooms in university buildings and NASA offices where the scientists actually run their simulations. They could have shown the real computer output, a string of numbers indicating planet size, distance from a sun, and atmospheric data. The producers of Extraterrestrial are unwilling to directly index this less glamorous truth and instead opt for presenting a visually pleasing entertainment, even though in doing so they present science fiction as scientific truth. Alien Planet similarly presents its fictional narrative as scientific truth, but because it has adapted a fictional source text, it must do so by replacing Expeditions glaringly fictitious elements with more realistic science, in this case a planned NASA mission. In both cases, the elements of entertainment completely overshadow the veracity of the science, and yet the audience remains assured that these future scientific discoveries are indeed true and will come to pass.

Expert Knowledge: The Slippage between Scientific and Fictional Expertise

The subjunctive documentaries discussed earlier (particularly Alien Planet, Extraterrestrial, Alien Autopsy, and Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real) seamlessly fuse science fiction and scientific knowledge in their depiction of fictional life forms. To further blur the distinction between the two, these documentaries specifically use science fiction entertainment figures to provide expert testimony in support of scientific claims. Such entertainment industry testimonials are provided alongside the testimony of scientists without discernment regarding their expertise. Additionally, the science experts used in these documentaries are often individuals with their own links to the entertainment world, adept in using the media to popularize their own scientific ideology.

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Perhaps appropriately, the subjunctive documentary often makes use of science fiction actors as narrators. While not scientific experts, they play them on T.V., which further blurs the delineation between science fact and fantasy in these productions. Star Trek alumni appear to be particularly apt in these positions, perhaps because they (or at least the characters they play) are the best experts available on alien life. This trope can be said to start with the use of Jonathan Frakes (Commander Wil Ryker of Star Trek: The Next Generation) in Alien Autopsy. The three-hour WWD is narrated by Avery Brooks, Commander Benjamin Sisko of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (in the United Kingdom, the BBC version was narrated by Kenneth Branagh). Extraterrestrials voiceover narration is provided by Michael Dorn (Lt. Worf, Star Trek: The Next Generation), and Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation) provides his vocal talents for Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real. Dragons was shown in the United Kingdom as Dragons Word: A Fantasy Made Real and narrated by Ian Holm, a robot in the 1979 science fiction film Alien. This use of alien experts as hosts of documentaries of alien creatures makes perfect sense, especially given that these endeavors are clearly more science fiction that science fact. The distinction between science fiction and documentary is obscured by the use of scientific experts who already have a stake in consumer-friendly depictions of scientific knowledge. Thus, WWD may have been designed to provide the most accurate portrayal of prehistoric animals ever seen on the screen (BBC website), but it also rode the coattails of the enormously successful Jurassic Park films, Jurassic Park (1993) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). Indeed, the central scientific expert of WWD is Jack Horner, the Montana paleontologist who not coincidentally served as the scientific consultant on the Jurassic Park films and on whom the main Jurassic Park character, Dr. Alan Grant, is based. Horner is also funded as a paleontologist by the Discovery Corporation. The scientists who are interviewed in Alien Planet are likewise media-savvy science stars. Dr. Stephen Hawking is a credentialed theoretical physicist but can also be said to be the popular face of astronomy, with best-selling books and a movie, and numerous appearances on television. Dr. Michio Kaku, who figures prominently in the show, holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in Theoretical Physics at City University of New York but has also penned the popular Einsteinian physics paperbacks Hyperspace (1994) and Parallel Worlds (2005). While I have no doubt that Horner, Hawking, and Kaku first and foremost use science as a basis for all their speculation about dinosaur/alien life, they nonetheless have all participated in a somewhat easy blend of scientific knowledge and seductive science fantasy in the media and have gotten rich doing it. An example of how even perfectly sound scientific statements can too easily blend with fantasy is in order. In Alien Planet, Dr. J. Craig Venter, father of the human genomequite literally, because his was one of five genomes originally sequencedis presented as an expert on the diversity of life: If you look at the

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diversity of species of what nature has come up with on this planet, nature has come up with better things than our best science fiction. This snippet of expertise comes sandwiched between vignettes describing life on Darwin IV, and thus, there is a slippage that allows the viewer to easily construe this statement to refer to that world, even though it is likely that Venters comments actually referred to life on Earth. With the reality (here, of life on an alien planet thus confirmed by trusted scientific experts), the viewer is again placed in a position to accept the fictional narrative as scientific documentary. Perhaps the most insidious use of expertise in these cable subjunctive documentary shows is the presentation of science fiction filmmakers as scientific experts. In Alien Planet, filmmaker George Lucas (director/executive producer of the Star Wars science fiction films) is interviewed alongside Horner, Kaku, Venter, and Hawking, with no distinction made between Lucass expertise and that of the scientists appropriately, one could say, because Lucas arguably has as much expertise in what an alien planet might look like as the physicists and biologists. This peculiar insistence of these documentaries that science fiction expertise is exactly as valuable as scientific expertise is perhaps most clearly demonstrated in Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real, where the final word in the show is given not to a scientist, not even to a narrator, but to the producers who crafted the show. Executive producer Kevin Mohs notes that Dragons is a real story, that happens in nature; what happens to these animals in their life cycles, again, [is] inspired from what happens in nature. Youre going to care about these animals, because we give them dimension, we give them personality. John Smithson, another executive producer, declares, You will believe, because the dragons look real; they feel real. And in a terrific moment of filmmaking hubris spoken during the closing credits, creator and executive producer Charlie Foley agrees: This is an animal that weve breathed life into, and it breathes fire, it flies, and its real. The shows subtitle, A Fantasy Made Real, has indeed come true, at least for those who made the show and, presumably, for the viewing audience as well.

Conclusion: The Stakes of Fictionalized Documentary

In todays media-saturated society, the teasing out of science fact from science fiction has become a difficult task. This is all the more true because science fiction and science fact are so readily mixed, both in science fiction that is partially based in fact and in subjunctive documentary that is heavily laden with fiction. The Roswell alien autopsy may have been officially debunked on television, but it remains an integral part of the popular imagination. The problem is illustrated by a recent classroom study, where 70 percent of college earth science students incorrectly identified microwaves from the sun as posing a threat to the Earth after watching the science

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fiction film The Core (Barnett and Kafka 2007). This incorrect information was embedded in a storyline that also included correct information about the Earths magnetic field, and students indicated that they trusted the films science content because they recognized some of the claims presented in the film as correct. Documentary theorists such as Nichols and Wolf grapple with indexicality and its link to meaning. In his essay on subjunctive documentary, Wolf (1999) wonders how far an indexical link can be stretched and displaced and still be considered valid in society (p. 287). Given the aggressive use of science fiction in the context of science documentary on cable science channels, the answer may be that it can snap altogether and no one will notice. More problematically, this uncoupling of scientific knowledge and its accurate presentation suggests that the science itself is subjunctive; that is, there is no (scientific) reality outside that which we as a culture believe. If this were so, the Mars Climate Orbiter would now be circling Mars because scientists thought it should, rather than skipping off the Martian atmosphere as it did in 1999 because of errors in the scientists calculations (Pollack 1999). Science is not immune to cultural influence and can also be used inappropriately to forward cultural agendas but nonetheless has as its basis in the physical laws of the universe. As shown by the Climate Orbiter fiasco, science only works properly when proper attention is paid to this physical basis. The subjunctive documentary is problematic because marginally researched, fantastical interpretations of scientific ideas are presented as being as valuable as academically vetted scientific claims, as long as they can be imagineered in CGI. In such a relativist position, the boundary between knowledge and opinion becomes lost, and society loses the potential use value of science. This cultural precedent of misinterpreting science in support of fantasy, via the argument that it could be true, does little to serve the public interest. The politically charged arguments regarding global warming are a case in point. In the critically wellreceived but controversial documentary An Inconvenient Truth (2006), former presidential candidate Al Gore returns to his environmentalist roots to argue the case for global warming. Armed with volumes of scientific data and an animated slide show, Gore offers up evidence of worldwide environmental change on an international lecture tour. It is no accident that his methodical descriptive style is reminiscent of Carl Sagan, author and host of the seminal 1980s science documentary series Cosmos. Through Cosmos and more popular outlets such as the Parade Sunday newspaper supplement, Sagan was able to engender a popular understanding of nuclear winter and its global consequences, a feat Gore clearly hopes to replicate regarding global warming. Within the scientific community, there is no dissent regarding the cause of global warming: emissions of carbon dioxide caused by the burning of fossil fuels in industrialized society. Indeed, in February 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading international group of climate scientists, published a report calling the evidence that humans were responsible for global warming unequivocal (Rosenthal and Revkin 2007). Nevertheless, media coverage suggests

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that scientific understanding of the phenomenon is much less certain (Gores documentary notes that even by 2005 only about 50 percent of popular press articles cited human activity as a cause of global warming). The ultimate result of such obfuscation may very well be that we destroy ourselves as a species or at least enough of us that little else we hold culturally dear will matter. Sadly, the consequences of such an anti-intellectual stance are already being felt, as An Inconvenient Truth has been assailed as leftist propaganda. Just days before the IPCC published its report, An Inconvenient Truth was banned from an entire school district in the Seattle area because one fundamentalist Christian parent was able to convince the school board that global warming was mere theory and that opposing viewpoints should also be presented (Harden 2007). Incidents such as these indicate that in science documentary must perform a function more critical than entertainment. There is indeed a great deal at stake in distinguishing between science fantasy and scientific knowledge and in having citizens able to judge the difference. While it is the case that subjunctive documentaries do provide repeated disclaimers that what is presented might be true (even as they also exhort that they are true), the unexamined mixing of CGI with real footage, of science fiction with science fact, and of expert testimony about what is known and what could be true provides an uneasy precedent for more subtle incorporation of imaginative elements into purportedly factual documentaries. Dragons, Extraterrestrial, and Alien Planet certainly indicate that Wolfs prescient fear of a subjunctive film documenting something-that-is-not has already come to pass.

References
Barlowe, Wayne Douglas. 1990. Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV. New York: Workman Publishing. Barnett, M., and Alan Kafka. 2007. Using Science Fiction Movie Scenes to Support Critical Analysis of Science. Journal of College Science Teaching 36 (4): 3135. Corliss, Richard. 1995. Autopsy or Fraud-topsy (Movie of an Autopsy Done on an Alleged Alien Found Near the Roswell, New Mexico Air Base, Fuels Debate). Time, November 27: 105. Darwin, Charles. 1909. The Voyage of the Beagle: Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World. New York: B.F. Collier and Son. Gallup, Alec M. 1999. The Gallup Poll Cumulative Index: Public Opinion, 1935-1997. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources. Harden, Blaine. 2007. Gore Film Sparks Parents Anger: Showing Inconvenient Truth Would Require Counterpoint. The Washington Post, January 25: A12. Hornig, Susanna. 1990. Televisions NOVA and the Construction of Scientific Truth. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 7: 11-23. Kaku, Michio. 1994. Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension. London: Oxford University Press. Kaku, Michio. 2005. Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimension and the Future of the Cosmos. New York: Doubleday.

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Kirkland, James I. 2006. James Ian Kirkland, Ph.D. Resume. Available at http://members.networld.com/ kirkland/resume.htm Moran, James M. 1999. A Bone of Contention: Documenting the Prehistoric Subject. In Collecting Visible Evidence (Collecting Evidence, Vol. 6), edited by J. M. Gaines and M. Renov. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Nichols, Bill. 1994. Blurred Boundaries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Noble, Ivan. 2002. BBC News World Edition: Astonishing Skull Unearthed in Africa. On the BBC archive at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2118055.stm Platt, Jane. 2004. Two Architectures Chosen for Terrestrial Planet Finder May 10. Web-based news release, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/TPF/tpf_architecture.cfm Pollack, Andrew. 1999. Missing What Didnt Add up, NASA Subtracts an Orbiter. The New York Times, October 1: 1A. Rosenthal, Elizabeth, and Andrew Revkin. 2007. Science Panel Says Global Warming Is Unequivocal. The New York Times, February 3: A1. University of York Communications Office. 2006. Guide to Expertise, Biology Department 2006. Available at http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/presspr/guide/depts/biology.htm Wolf, Mark J. P. 1999. Subjunctive Documentary: Computer Imaging and Simulation. In Collecting Visible Evidence (Collecting Evidence, Vol. 6), edited by J. M. Gaines and M. Renov. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Anneke M. Metz is an assistant professor of science pedagogy at Montana State University, Bozeman. She is interested in media representations of science, particularly in television documentary. She also researches differences in student learning in the undergraduate biology classroom, particularly with respect to gender, race, and cultural background, and the integration of quantitative reasoning into biology curricula. She is currently investigating the teaching of statistics in biology curricula and the impact of small-group learning within large undergraduate biology lecture courses.

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