Rating***

What’s it about? The wizards at the Discovery Asia pacific network decided to launch Ultimate Discovery to showcase the best of their programming from around the world. The shows are on a variety of themes from revolutionary discoveries in science and technology, the natural world, adventure and exploration. NASA-When We left Earth, the show that will launch the broadcast of the channel is about 50 years of NASA’s advances in space. Future Weapons, is a series of new age weapons and combat technology. Ultrasound guns, tactical high energy lasers and interceptor guns, electro magnetic pulse generators are all being developed by scientists for US army. The most interesting show is Man Vs Wild, with a British mountaineer and adventurer battling the elements. The episode finds him stranded in the middle of the Utah desert with just a bottle of water and a hunting knife.

Who’s in it? Man Vs Wild is presented by the unbelievable adventure fiend and writer Bear Grylls. There is nothing this man can’t do, no terrain he cannot tackle. His expertise in the ecology, survival techniques and extreme levels of fitness make the viewing both inspirational and educative, as he gets through the harshest, most unforgiving landscapes and whether conditions. He climbed to the top of Mount Everest at the age of 23. Grylls is a popular face on British television and has hosted his own shows such as Escape to the Legion and Born Survivor (Man Vs Wild in the US).

Future Weapons on the other hand, hosted by Richard Machowicz, an ex-marine who looks more like a programmed machine from Universal Soldier and presents with absolutely no imagination in script or comments about the weapons.

What’s hot? Man Vs Wild is a must watch for those who love being out in the wild, battling it out with the forces of nature. There is also a lot to learn from the way Grylls improvises simple available objects from the environment around to ensure his survival. In the Utah desert, there is a particularly interesting scene when he makes a straw out of the stalk of a desert plant, to sip water from rock spring trickle which he dams using the mud around. A fatigued Grylls, eats one of the raw with the shell while scrambling the other one on a flat stone that has been baking under the desert sun.

What’s not? Grylls’ feats are not entirely believable and upon a closer look it is clear that some of them are staged. He received some flak for this, causing TV 4 suspend his show temporarily. Future Weapons is a bit disturbing in the way it showcases its weapons in a stylised format. It uses archival footage of police failures at hostage situations and the like to fight its case for an arms build-up, tapping into the legendary American propaganda tool of paranoia. When We Left Earth is pretty drab in its packaging, using a tried and tested format of interviews, old footage and monotonous voiceover.

Should you be watching it? What you see is not a daredevil Steve Irvin getting his head between the wrong set of jaws, but an aware and educated mountaineer who cares for the environment, acknowledges its dangers and the precious lessons its has to offer. Future Weapons is important viewing to see just what the establishment is doing with all the tax-payers money in the US. When We Left Earth uses exclusive footage of the days leading up to launches, the astronauts preparing, and interestingly-the media coverage of the first men to go into space. It’s a good lesson in history.