History (perhaps trying to piggyback some of that just-starting hype for Land of the Lost?) has gathered together a collection of previously released documentary series and specials with a prehistoric focus, and packaged them as, not surprisingly, The Prehistoric Collection: From Dinosaurs to the Dawn of Man, an 8-disc, 17+ hour set that includes the first season of Jurassic Fight Club, a re-release of Prehistoric Megastorms, which includes six episodes from History's Mega Disasters series, and two stand-alone 2008 specials, Clash of the Cave Men and Journey to 10,000 B.C.. These releases are the exact same ones from 2008, with no upgrades to anamorphic enhancements or new extras, so double-dipping is unnecessary. All of these releases have been previously covered by DVDTalk reviewers (except for the Prehistoric Megastorms - and it's certainly nothing special), so there's no need, really, to go too in-depth here.

Actually, the usual debates about the scientific worthiness of these History documentaries are as interesting to me, frankly, as the actual programs - a feeling that increased as I watched all of these episodes and as I kept hearing the same qualifiers and caveats from the various scientists and historians and experts. Anyone familiar with these kinds of docs knows that the line usually runs, "Enjoy these for what they are: heavy speculation oriented towards entertainment purposes." Certainly the on-camera experts don't state positively this is how these events occurred thousands and millions of years ago. In fact, most of the docs here have one or two moments where the scientists make a point of saying something along the lines of, "These are informed hypotheses, but that's all - we're guessing." I've reviewed many History docs before, and at times, I get angry or dismissive emails from teachers and historians, lambasting these shows for supposedly perpetrating shabby science in the name of disposeable TV (and the internet forums are filled with parsing cranks who pick these docs to pieces). I'm certainly no expert on these subjects, so I don't know the controversies and various debates over the theories stated here (did raptors really have feathers? Uh...I don't know, and frankly, unless this is a test, I don't care), but in the end, these docs are designed to appeal to a popular audience - not a scientific one. And if they get a viewer interested enough in a subject to dig a little deeper, what's the harm in that? And if a viewer shuts out the science and just enjoys the entertainment factor (as could certainly happen with the repetitive but enjoyable Jurassic Fight Club), again - why all the drama? Relax, and let people enjoy these (or not), but it's not life and death here.

Well...at least not life and death for the viewer. That being said, the episodes and specials included in The Prehistoric Collection: From Dinosaurs to the Dawn of Man are to varying degrees, quite enjoyable on a generalized TV-watching level. I learned quite a few things I didn't know before, and, for the most part, the shows were well produced, relatively speedy, and painless as far as mixing the science and the spectacle. If I had one general complaint about all of the shows here - and granted, this perception may have stood out more because I watched all of these episodes over just a few nights - it would be the repetitive "sameness" of the docs' format. In the now-expected, almost clichéd manner of most cable documentary series, filmed re-creations of historical (or theoretical) events are intercut with talking head interview snippets with various experts, who tell us what we just saw, while setting us up for what we're going to see. Location footage where the events occurred, along with graphics and maps to further expand the narrative are also mixed in. And considering the nature of the these documentaries, CGI special effects (once rare but now must-have - and no longer surprising - compliments to cable docs) are interwoven with the filmed re-creations and the interviews in an attempt to give the visual schematics of these docs a noticeable jolt. And none of this changes for any of these docs. They're all put together in the same fashion. One might even believe they could have been directed and produced by the same film company, with the same writers and editors pulling multiple assignments, as well. Anyone who watches a lot of these kinds of docs has become thoroughly used to this format, and quite frankly...it's getting a bit...dull. But until something comes along that's both innovative and popular in challenging this thoroughly conventional approach to cable docs' formats, get used to them.

JURASSIC FIGHT CLUB

So, with most of these shows looking and sounding alike, it's up to the actual content of the episodes as to whether or not they're going to hold our interest. First up in The Prehistoric Collection: From Dinosaurs to the Dawn of Man boxed set is Jurassic Fight Club, which premiered last summer to some enthusiastic notices from both critics and audiences. Crossing CSI: Crime Scene Investigation with One Million Years B.C., NFL Films highlights, and Celebrity Death Match, Jurassic Fight Club takes a look at various archeological dig sites where dinosaur bones are found (except they're not really bones, apparently, but fossil mineral deposits in the shape of the original bones), and tries to postulate what might have caused these massive prehistoric beasts to expire. Here's a hint: it always includes fighting.

Obviously, the main appeal of the various Jurassic Fight Club episodes are the final battle sequences between the dinosaurs (or other prehistoric beasts, such as the Arctodus bear or the Megalodon shark). Dino docs were all the rage a while ago, but they pretty much ran their course when we saw the umpteenth close-up of a scientist carefully brushing away some dust from a buried bone. Obviously, someone figured out that if they were going to engage documentary-sated viewers on dinos again, they'd have to bring the fight to the audience. And the concept works. It's repetitive as hell, but it works. Each episode starts with a teaser showing the dinos bashing the bejeesus out of each other before the eggheads (just kidding) settle in and start setting the scene about the time period, the dinos involved, the conditions of the battle sights, and finally the theories about what might have happened. And all of that is fine (and well produced), delivered with an energy that I found engaging. The nominal host of the series, "Dinosaur George" Blasing, is an enthusiastic booster of all things dino, and his excited plain-speak about what we're seeing is a perfect fit for the tone of the docs. In Biggest Killers, when Blasing explains a Utahraptor's huge killing claw in these terms - "And listen, you don't have big claws to play the piano; you have big claws to rip somebody's head off" - that's a perfect melding of content and audience expectations (they all take particular delight, as well, in describing those "meat-slicing" teeth that take out "huge chunks of flesh"). Because I would imagine that's what most guys want to see when they're tuning into this show: carnage. Sure, the science is interesting, even awe-inspiring at times (the description of the 50ft Megalodon shark is wild). And I did feel like I was getting a lot of fascinating information that I hadn't heard before; these experts are obviously knowledgeable, but equally important, they're enthusiastic about what they know - and that translates well to the audience.

But...when all's said and done, most of us want to see the fights (as the scientists keep saying in these docs: animal behavior doesn't change, and it's a violent world out there). And, shaky CGI effects aside, those battles are pretty exhilarating when the experts map out the step-by-step logistics of the brawls, and the motivations behind the beasts' actions. Blesing comes up with a beautifully concise metaphor for dino cognition - a series of light switches which only turn on one at a time: eating, killing, reproducing - that seemed startlingly clear to me. And with that kind of informed but accessible scripting, Jurassic Fight Club turned out to be quite enjoyable. The science was instructive and enlightening, and the fights kicked ass (I particularly enjoyed the vicious finale of Ice Age Monsters, which featured the incredible Arctodus "short-faced" bear and the Panthera cat). Yes, eventually, you do see how each episode is pretty much undifferentiated from the next (the structure is rigid), and some of those graphics do earn a well-deserved content warning at the beginning of each episode - this show is not for small kids at all (when the mother dino eats her dead baby in Cannibal Dinosaur, I knew I was right in telling my dino-crazy five-year-old we'd have to wait and see if he could watch it). But in the end, it's still fascinating stuff, nicely produced, and brought over with much enthusiasm.

PREHISTORICA MEGASTORMS

I can't say I was as impressed with Prehistoric Megastorms. Taken from the Mega Disasters series, the six episodes included here - Hypercane, Mega Tsunami, Noah's Great Flood, Comet Storm, Volcanic Winter, and Prehistoric English Superflood - fit in quite blandly with the standard "doomsday apocalypse" docs that frequent cable history and science channels. Again, as with all the docs in this The Prehistoric Collection: From Dinosaurs to the Dawn of Man set, the talking heads stare 45 degrees off to the left or right, speaking to an invisible "someone" behind the camera's range, discussing the various hypothetical scenarios for past, vast earthly disasters, while less-than-stellar CGI work of the tsunamis and floods and smashing comets vie with lesser, static graphics for the viewer's attention.

This is pretty dry stuff, despite the socko subjects they have to work with here. Absolutely nothing distinguishes these Prehistoric Megastorms docs from countless other ones you've already watched. They're interesting, to be sure, for the info and suppositions they throw out (I found the Prehistoric English Superflood to be particularly fascinating). However, the delivery system here is decidedly lackluster (the pace of the thing is lifeless). It doesn't help, either, that the CGI effect work is sub-par even for these kinds of cable docs (the mega tsunami effect looked like one of those live-action/cartoon combination sequences from SpongeBob SquarePants). If you're going to try and exploit the "death and disaster" elements of these kinds of doom-and-gloom historical docs, then you have to have at least a running shot at making some fairly decent special effects. Unfortunately, Prehistoric Megastorms just don't cut it. And predictably, each episode then tries to extrapolate these events to our own time, sending out gloomy vibes about what might happen should the earth experience another catastrophic natural event like a massive coastal tsunami or a volcanic winter (it gets a little thick when we're talking about a hypercane, because that's just speculation). Older kids get a charge out of these kinds of "blink and you'll die" science scare-fests; docs like this are "sweet" (my one teen's words when he saw the hypercane) because they don't think it can happen to them, but all the same, it's "fun" to get scared by them. But for adults with all-too active imaginations (along with enough problems of their own in the real world), sitting through six of these shake-and-bake docs might elicit not educated concern, but resigned world-weariness ("Along with my taxes going through the roof, now I've got to worry about a hypercane and a six mile-wide asteroid taking out the earth? You can have it."). It may not be "science," but what a series like Mega Disasters needs is a little juice, a little exploitation for exploitation's sake (like the science-based, but lets face it, gratuitous dino battles in Jurassic Fight Club). Unfortunately for Prehistoric Megastorms, middle-of-the-road mediocrity is what you'll get.

As for the final two specials in The Prehistoric Collection: From Dinosaurs to the Dawn of Man set, I enjoyed Clash of the Cave Men and Journey to 10,000 B.C. a bit more than the Prehistoric Megastorms because their filmed re-creations sequences reminded me of those beloved (but delightfully crazy and goofy) Schick Sunn Classic films I saw as a kid (the day Paramount, whom I understands owns the rights to the old Sunn Classic line, releases In Search of Noah's Ark, Beyond and Back, The Lincoln Conspiracy, and In Search of Historic Jesus in widescreen DVDs, I can safely "lock down" my disc collection). In Clash of the Cave Men, a band of Neanderthals led by a guy who looks like a cross between Alley Oop, Hagrid, and Rupert from Survivor, furtively duck behind trees and rocks, grunting monosyllabically as they look wonderingly at the fair-haired, almost-rakish Homo Sapiens who just swanned on into Europe. And in Journey to 10,000 B.C., a beatific Clovis Paleo-Indian family, forever looking out into the American distance while the wind softly blows their hair, stoically faces dangers like mammoths squishing their heads until their eyes pop out (yep, they show that in full CGI close-up), and hungry CGI cats right out of The Flintstones, as they "gossip" around the campfire (according to one scientist).

All of this is hysterically funny inbetween the engrossing talking heads segments where the scientists impart some intriguing facts and theories about these fascinating historical periods. But anyone looking for in-depth (or even followed-up) info on the many theories thrown out here, won't find it, because these specials just aren't designed with that kind of completeness in mind. In Clash of the Cave Men, one scientist says "it's as though [the Neanderthals] suddenly got smarter" (three words: Erich von Daniken), but not nearly enough follow-through is devoted to this critical juncture in the doc (Trenton Holliday doesn't rule out the fact that Neanderthals still walk among us...but absolutely nothing is made of this wowzer statement that's just thrown out there). Journey to 10,000 B.C., a little more tightly focused than Clash of the Cave Men, suffers badly from the worst CGI effects on this set (Clash on the other hand, has some marvelous 3D limited animation sequences that remind one of cave paintings)...and then briefly trots out the all-too predictable b.s. on so-called "man-made global warming," which got me laughing all over again. Curious mixtures of inept re-creations and intriguing science, Clash of the Cave Men and Journey to 10,000 B.C. at least don't shy away from those elements that are exploitive and garish, which puts them above the blah Prehistoric Megastorms.

The DVD:

The Video:
History, the Neanderthals among the Homo Sapian DVD releasing companies, continues to release their programs in sub-par, 1.85:1 letterboxed, non-anamorphic transfers. Why? Perhaps "suddenly, they'll get smarter." Images are sharp and clear, and colors are correctly valued - all of which would look so much better if they were enhanced. Compression issues are negligible.

The Audio:
Some of the programs have some nice separation effects even within the limited Dolby Digital English 2.0 stereo mixes (Jurassic sounds particularly good). Everything is cleanly delineated, with no hiss. Close-captions are listed as available, but they didn't work on any of my players or monitors.

The Extras:
Jurassic has some additional short clips of bonus info featuring "Dinosaur George" Blasing discussing a wide range of topics on dinos (interesting), while there's an additional episode of Mega Disasters, Asteroid Apocalypse (not too interesting). In other words, the same extras from the previous releases.

Final Thoughts:
The Prehistoric Collection: From Dinosaurs to the Dawn of Man features the same transfers and extras that were utilized for the included programs' individual DVD releases, so double-dipping isn't necessary. Jurassic Fight Club, Prehistoric Megastorms, Clash of the Cave Men, and Journey to 10,000 B.C. certainly aren't perfect, with sometimes shoddy CGI effects, questionable filmed re-creations, and good science that doesn't always answer the questions the viewer has - but they're still, for the most part, quite entertaining (and some are downright funny). I recommend The Prehistoric Collection: From Dinosaurs to the Dawn of Man.