What the hell, History Channel?
I've been watching this show Monster Quest since it first aired a couple months ago. I'm a bit of a sucker for a good cryptozoology/fortean television program, and, while I'm generally a skeptic, these kind of shows at least get my attention.
The show started off pretty good. They did a forensics analysis of a Canadian hunting cabin that found blood and hair samples that might be Bigfoot - it's not revolutionary here, but it was at least an attempt to find physical, testable proof. There was only a single eyewitness account, and most of the show consisted of physics projections (to show the height and strength needed to tear a cabinet fixture off a wall, as in a photo) and DNA testing.
The second episode was even better, and managed to get photographs of a "Giant Squid" - basically, just by using advanced tech to send a camera deeper down in an area where lots of squid were assumed to be. It's not like the show found a Colossal Kraken, but at least they managed to show that biologists' predictions (that squids grow bigger at greater depths) were right - and honestly, footage of a 20-ft long, fairly intelligent (possible using symbolic communication), predatory (they attack divers) thing with 10 tentacles.
Since then, the show has pretty much taken a credibility nosedive. A show looking for giant north american thunderbirds concluded that...people think things that are far away are bigger than they really are.
An episode about massive, carniverous freshwater fish spent most of the show...interviewing "noodlers" who catch catfish with their bare hands (or, as Kahn Soupanousanphon knows it, "cat-fisting")
Last week's episode was about "rods" - small, cylindrical objects that were caught on video, but not the naked eye. While I spent the hour giggling every time I heard "...and here we see the rod bursting out of the water..." the team of 'scientists' decided that, rather than being transdimensional, precambrian, flying aliens...the "rods" were just bugs flying past the camera lens faster than the shutter speed.
All this does not bode well for science...
But after tonight, I just might need to find a new Wednesday night 10-11pm show. The scientific evidence that there might be a "Dogman" stalking the Wisconsin woods was...lie detector tests of 5 witnesses. Then, just before the credits, they find a hair sample in the woods. They take it to a forensics expert, who reveals...
...
...
...
"this hair has clearly been exposed to the elements."
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