YMMV / Prehistoric Planet

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • During the first Tuarangisaurus segment, the males proceed to engage in contests to impress the females. The problem is, that they do this by raising their necks vertically out of the water◊ (the act being a reference to the book All Yesterdays, that shows some elasmosaurs doing the same), which, given their long necks and tiny heads, it may look like they're measuring something else than their necks...
  • The Tyrannosaurus mating sequence has some conveniently-placed vegetation in front of the tyrannosaur couple that make the scene way more suggestive than it should be.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Was the big male Barbaridactylus really fooled by the sneaky male's mimicry? Given that in nature, some male animals will court sneaky males even after learning their true sex, it's not unreasonable to think that he wasn't and simply was interested in courting the sneak regardless. One reviewer pointed out that the sneaky male, despite having the short crest and small stature of a female, still had the red coloration of a male, making it highly likely that the larger male knew exactly what he was doing.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Hans Zimmer's main theme is as awesome as you'd expect from him while Kara Talve and Anže Rozman's remaining tracks measure up and even surpass it:
  • The main theme. Welcome to the world of the dinosaurs.
  • The music for the Dreadnoughtus sequence set a great mood for how big and powerful they are.
  • The battle music as the old male Mosasaurus fights a rival and then triumphantly swims to the surface.
  • The Deinocheirus gets a hilariously over-the-top theme with strings echoing tracks from Pirates of the Caribbean.
  • The battle between the Nanuqsaurus and Pachyrhinosaurus is accompanied by a track that is both eerie and epic shifting tones sublimely with the phases of their clash, from tense standoff to hectic chase.
• Creepy Cute:
  • The older Mosasaurus in "Coasts" is a huge, fearsome predator at the top of the food chain in his environment, but the way he lets the pycnodonts and cleaner shrimps clean him and feed on his dead skin, as well as the moment when he turns his belly for the reef creatures to clean it too (similar to a dog) has made many viewers consider him endearing and adorable.
  • Many of the pterosaurs may count, with their comical proportions and fluffiness making them somewhat endearing despite their oversized heads and alien-looking limbs.
  • The Carnotaurus may be a two-ton carnivore with massive horns and spikes, but the awkward mating dance he performs looks oddly endearing.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Deinocheirus in Freshwater, thanks to the hilarious depiction of it, even though it only appeared in one scene.
  • The little Zalmoxes in Forests are popular despite their brief role due to their small size and round body, which many fans consider adorable.
  • Season 2's Imperobator pack have been the talk of the town for being representation of an underrated and impressive animal, having a beautiful design and an exciting chase sequence.
• Even Better Sequel: The second season was praised for having a greater focus on story, keeping the action contained to singular settings, and including interviews with paleontologists to explain which parts were factual and which were speculative. Music and visuals got a huge upgrade as well.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Some have taken to calling the father Tyrannosaurus "Hank".
  • The Mosasaurus hoffmannii getting a cleaning service is nicknamed "Hoff." (This one being a name given to him by the production team).
  • The male and female Carnotaurus are often called "Ron" and "Becky", after the two bowerbirds from the original "Lemme Smash" meme video. The male is also called "Caspar", after paleontologist Mark Witton's rooster who was used as a reference for his dance.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • With Jurassic World Dominion due to the latter's less-than-accurate portrayal of their dinosaurs, especially one hyping up the Prehistoric Monster vibe to extreme levels. The fact that Prehistoric Planet features several animals that are also making their highly anticipated franchise debuts in Dominion (such as Quetzalcoatlus, Therizinosaurus, Dreadnoughtus and Atrociraptor), as well as iconic long-term mainstays of the Jurassic World franchise such as Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor and Mosasaurus, has only furthered the comparisons and clashes.
  • A more minor case with Amazing Dinoworld due to this series' more colorful portrayal of feathered dinosaurs as opposed to Prehistoric Planet's more drab tones for them.
  • One with Warrior Nun of all things, as fans of the latter spammed a teaser for season two with demands for it to be Uncancelled and given a Channel Hop to Apple TV+, and when it turned out this wasn't the case they went very hostile. Though it is a one-sided example, as fans of this series haven't reacted worse then lighthearted mockery.
  • A one-sided example with Life on Our Planet, but given that both shows came out roughly at the same time on rival streaming platforms and are advertised as documentaries, this is bound to happen. Unfortunately for Life on Our Planet, a lot of paleontological nerds found out that the series is dominated by outdated cliches that became irksome given that it is meant to be "accurate". Even when one ignores severe inaccuracies like the Smilodon and Terror Bird relationship, fans of Prehistoric Planet view that Life On Our Planet brings nothing new to the table.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Unsurprisingly, one was formed with fans of Walking with Dinosaurs, not only for being another fictional documentary presenting dinosaurs as normal animals living their daily lives, but especially because the sunrise that appears in the first teaser is an obvious Shout-Out to the opening intro of Walking with Dinosaurs. As such, many fans of the first see Prehistoric Planet as the Spiritual Successor of the Walking with... franchise many had dreamed for years, with more up to date information and a more accurate portrayal of the extinct animals features. It probably does help that many fans of the Walking With series immediately became fans of Prehistoric Planet, having grown up watching the former and now getting to witness the latter.
  • With David James Armsby's Dinosauria, which similarly has been praised for its refreshing accuracy, minimal speculation, and its similar portrayal of Nanuqsaurus versus Pachyrhinosaurus. They have also been positively compared in how they both portray dinosaurs as animals rather than monsters.
• Hype Backlash: In spite of the overwhelmingly positive reception of the series from critics and audiences alike, a very Vocal Minority complains about how the series is "boring" due to not much action taking place, comparing it unfavorably narrative-wise to Walking With Dinosaurs, or how it portrays very speculative elements stated as fact. Others simply dislike the designs of the dinosaurs due to them being far removed from traditional portrayals of the animals.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: A small but common criticism of the show is that many of the episodes feel rather short and have less content than anticipated. This is especially noticeable in season two where most episodes clock in at about thirty-six minutes.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Despite the praise the show received for its more naturalistic depiction of prehistoric life, it has received some criticism from longtime BBC nature documentary viewers for the fact that many of the storylines are just adaptations of scenes from previous BBC Nature documentaries but with prehistoric animals swapped in. In a particularly notable case, the scene from "Deserts" with a lizard attempting to grab flies by a sleeping Tarbosaurus is not only a direct transliteration of a scene from a previous documentary where a lizard is shown to do the same near a lion, but Attenborough's narration is lifted verbatim from that scene as well. However, it's unclear how much of this can be chalked up to lack of originality and how much may have just intended to be a homage to those aforementioned previous scenes.
• LGBT Fanbase: Despite this series following the mainstream documentary approach of ignoring homosexual behaviours in animals, LGBT fans have quickly latched into the "femboy pterosaur" (female-mimicking male Barbaridactylus) and his "alpha" as icons.
• Memetic Loser:
  • The male Carnotaurus from "Forests" is mocked by fans of the documentary due to being the only male of the series who participates in a mating ritual who Did Not Get the Girl and failed to attract the female he was courting. As such, it's usual for fanworks to portray him as a loser who cannot get a female unlike other successful males.
  • The T. rex became one due to its portrayal in "North America", where it's bested by two Quetzalcoatlus and forced to escape and leave the Alamosaurus carcass to them despite being stronger (the issue isn't strength, it's that the Quetzalcoatlus duo can easily peck his eyes out with those giant beaks, which would permanently cripple its ability to hunt), with many fanworks depicting it as a wimp with a chronic fears of azhdarchids.
• Memetic Mutation: More than enough to warrant a page.
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • Since their whole screentime consisted of eating baby animals, the Phosphatodraco, Rajasaurus and the Beelzebufo are portrayed in the fandom as insatiable child eaters, often Flanderized as literal child predators.
  • The troodontid seen in "Ice Worlds" quickly got labelled as a psychopathic pyromaniac due to its tactic of spreading forest fires to hunt the animals running from the flames.
• Narm: While the Nanuqsaurus are depicted as Expies of wolves, giving them howl-like calls might be going a bit too far.
• Narm Charm: The entire Carnotaurus sequence. The very idea of a two-ton apex predator dancing to attract a mate while wiggling his miniscule blue arms sounds absolutely ridiculous, bit it's a refreshing change of pace from the always-violent Prehistoric Monster portrayal of the menacing-looking carnivore and highlights how similar they are to living animals today.
• Older Than They Think: A depiction of T. rex swimming first appears in the Jurassic Park novel in 1990, albeit it wasn't visual.
• One-Scene Wonder: There are quite a lot of them due to the format the show uses. Many species only appear in one scene... but what scenes they are.
  • The mosasaur Kaikaifilu only appears in the climax sequence of "Coasts", but it also protagonizes one of the most exciting moments from the episode, involving a chasing sequence between it and the Tuarangisaurus calf (and later the rest of the pod).
  • The big frog Beelzebufo briefly makes an appearance in "Freshwater" snatching a baby Masiakasaurus and hiding in the mud as fast as it appeared, but the image of a frog predating on a dinosaur (even if a small one) is quite a sight.
  • In the same episode, during the segment of the elasmosaurs fishing in the estuary, an unnamed South American sauropod takes a look at the spectacle of the marine reptiles. Such sauropod has a striking design despite having only a few seconds of screen time. It looks similar enough to the Austroposeidon from "Forests" that it might be the same species.
  • "Ice Worlds" features the only mammals of the first season, the never depicted before multituberculate Cimolodon. Unfortunately, it's only fast food for the troodontid.
  • The ammonite segment of "Oceans" leaves quite an impression despite most species getting only a few seconds of screentime each, due to highlighting just how diverse and bizarre this underappreciated group of invertebrates really were. The Diplomoceras is especially memorable on account of its positively surreal shell shape (which, in Attenborough's own words, looks like a giant paperclip).
• Salvaged Story: One of the issues with Season 1 was that it focused primarily on dinosaurs, pterosaurs and marine reptiles, leaving out other interesting creatures, especially the surprisingly varied mammals and crocodilians of the Cretaceous. Season 2 addressed this, with the herbivorous land living crocodilian Simosuchus and the gondwanathere mammal Adelatherium both being given focus segments during Islands, while Shamosuchus has a focus segment during the start of Swamps.
• The Scrappy: Fans of the series tend to single out the Shamosuchus from "Swamps" as their least favourite creature in the series' lineup. Maybe it's the CG models being of way lower quality then the rests of the animals, or that it has one of the more egregious cases of Artistic License – Paleontology in the series^note it should be going by the name Paralligator, with the real Shamosuchus having been an earlier and much smaller animal.
• Signature Scene:
  • From Season 1:
    • The swimming T. rex family quickly became one of the most memorable scenes of the program, due to the contrast of such a huge land animal swimming in the sea without any problems (of which there is evidence, as shown in the behind-the-scenes from "Coasts") and joined by his hatchlings too. It went to the point where it was featured in almost every promotion of the documentary, including the main key visual.
    • The clash between the male Dreadnoughtus in "Deserts", both for the sheer spectacle and being one of the few times in fiction to completely defy the Gentle Giant Sauropod trope.
    • The Velociraptor hunting sequence in "Freshwater" shows how a real Raptor Attack would go down, with the raptors jumping off cliffs and demonstrating that those feathers aren't just for show.
    • It didn't take long for the Carnotaurus's mating dance scene to become one of the most popular moments of the program, due to featuring a fairly popular theropod engaging in a very goofy dance involving moving his stubby, little arms to impress a female.
  • From Season 2:
    • The Mosasaurus breaching out of the water like a great white shark with the young Tuarangisaurus on its jaws in "Oceans" became one of the most recognizable scenes of the second series, to the point it was used for the main key visual of the second season and shown in most of the trailers of it.
    • For better or worse, the duel between the T. rex and the two Quetzalcoatlus in "North America" soon turned into one of the most iconic scenes of the documentary both for the spectacle of having three huge animals facing each other and because the huge theropod ends up being the loser of the confrontation.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • While the CGI of the dinosaurs is extremely realistic, one very notable moment is noticeable in the Deinocheirus scene as, due to a layering error, the swarm of flies buzzing around the dinosaur's body disappear for a few frames when he turns around in one shot.
  • Some of the water effects look rather unconvincing, such as the shot of the male mosasaur with his head above the surface.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • The series can be considered an adaptation All Yesterdays, a previous Darren Naish-helmed speculative dinosaur project. The series even adapts several scenes directly from the book.
  • Seen by many as one to Walking with Dinosaurs. The latter, while a beloved classic, has not aged particularly well in the scientific accuracy department and, to a lesser extent, in the special effects department. Although some dinosaur-related documentaries were released prior to Prehistoric Planet, none managed to capture the imagination much like Walking With did. To a lot of people who grew up with the Walking With series, Prehistoric Planet is a successor that once again displays Mesozoic life as actual animals while updating their portrayals with the 20+ years of paleontological knowledge that has been gained since Walking With Dinosaurs aired. In fact, one of the same effect studios who provided many of the animatronics and puppets for the Walking with series, Crawley Creatures, and one of the character designers of the Walking with Dinosaurs movie, also participates in this one.
  • The series is also basically an unofficial "prequel" to the Planet Earth documentaries, with a similar title and logo, and episodes that are also divided up by habitat-type and further segmented into vignettes of one or two animals specifically. It's also of course produced by many of the same people in the BBC Natural History Unit and has the same narrator.
• Squick: The baby Isisaurus in "Badlands" eating their mothers' dung, which itself is an ugly rancid shade of green. This is admittedly something a lot of creatures do, but still.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Isisaurus plotline from "Badlands" would have been a perfect place to introduce the giant snake Sanajeh, which is known from the same formation at the same time and is even known to have preyed on sauropod eggs, which would provide both another obstacle for the Isisaurus hatchlings and a very unique new animal for the setting. This still wouldn't have been a case of this trope had it not been for the fact that its close relative Madtsoia actually got its own model for its brief appearance in the Madagascar scene from "Islands", so that model could have just been reused with minor alterations for Sanajeh.
• Ugly Cute:
  • Who would have thought that a Carnotaurus of all things would manage to be so oddly endearing?
  • The Masiakasaurus in "Freshwater" could also count, due to its oddly-proportioned snout making it look like a Perpetual Frowner.
  • The Tuarangisaurus tenderly caring for their young make them quite endearing, even in spite of their gnarled pointed teeth.
  • The Beelzebufo in "Swamps" is depicted as a goofy and round creature in his attempts to cross the swamp where the Rapetosaurus group is laying upon to claim another mating spot. A far cry from its rather chilling portrayal in "Freshwater".
  • The Simosuchus in "Islands" is basically a crocodile mixed with a prairie dog, and it's as adorable as it is weird looking.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The entire series is breathtaking, but the first episode got special praise for the shots of the cleaner shrimp and other animals cleaning the Mosasaurus's shed skin, which seamlessly blends real animals and special effects. And much like Jon Favreau's previous efforts on The Jungle Book (2016) and The Lion King (2019), the animation is provided by Moving Picture Company, bringing their experiences on both projects and vastly improving on them.