Is anyone watching this mini-series? <p>E-mail me at cinderella4mb@yahoo.com - please.<p>My 9yo S is distressed by missing Monday episode.<p>[ May 14, 2002: Message edited by: cinderella ]</p>

Sorry I missed it...forgot it was on actually..

Yes, I'm watching it with my daughters. I didn't tape last night's episode, but plan to tape tonight's.
I was a little distracted but can give you some background.

Taped it but missed some parts because I was talking to ExH who had dropped off the kids.<p>Cool plot, great scenes and dinosaurs but terrible acting by the kids IMO.<p>If Nikko can't help let me know. K

I pulled this off the abc website<p>Dinotopia, the epic story of a lost continent where dinosaurs and humans live together in an almost-utopian world, is brought to life as one of the most lavish productions in the history of American television. A six-hour miniseries, Dinotopia is based on the best-selling books by author/illustrator James Gurney.<p>Frank Scott (Stuart Wilson), a wealthy American, appears to perish when his plane crashes into the Caribbean. His two teenaged sons, Karl (Tyron Leitso) and David (Wenthworth Miller), survive, and find themselves stranded on Dinotopia, a fanstastic lost continent where humans and dinosaurs peacefully co-exist.<p>Dinotopia's colorful human inhabitants include resident rogue Cyrus Crabb (David Thewlis), a descendant of shipwrecked pirates, who lives as an outlaw in the utopian society; smart, beautiful Marion (Katie Carr), who is in training to be a matriarch and leader of her people; Marion's father, Mayor Waldo (Jim Carter), overseer of Dinotopia's spectacular capital, Waterfall City; her mother, revered matriarch Rosemary (Alice Krige) and Oonue (Colin Salmon), commander of the Skybax Corps (humans that train to fly huge Pterosaurs with 30-foot wingspans).<p>Marion &#8212; who captures both Karl's and David's hearts &#8212; leads the brothers to Waterfall City, where Mayor Waldo has them enrolled in the capital's academy so they can learn to become Dinotopians. They're soon befriended by the talkative Zippo, an academic Stenonychosaurus who speaks 17 human and Saurian languages. Upon receiving their assignments, cyncial Karl is charged with overseeing the birth of an infant Chasmosaurus named 26. David &#8212; terrified of heights &#8212; must undergo Skybax training on the frontier of Dinotopia, Canyon City.<p>The brothers soon discover that the sunstones, a force of life for Dinotopia, are failing, and the world may soon be plunged into chaos. The boys are the keys to Dinotopia's survival, but in order to save their new home, they must journey to the World Beneath, a dangerous territory forbidden to all the continent's inhabitants. <p>On Monday's episode, the boys were assigned positions. Carl was assigned to the farm, where Marion's mother rules, and was assigned an orphan dinosaur egg - his saurian mate, which he didn't want. Carl wanted to look for his father so he repaired a boat, along with Crabb and set sail. But his mate, 26, jumped into the ocean with him, so Carl had to save her and postpone his journey.
Crabb has lured Zippo to his shop and Zippo realized that he has been stealing artifacts to find the world down under. Crabb then tried to drown Zippo.
Earlier in the show, Zippo announced to the city council that he had found an access door to the world down under, but the city would not hear of going there. It was forbidden.<p>David, who is afraid of heights and flying - recall the flight which brought them here, can't believe Marion's mother assigned him to flight school. He can't stand being up so high. By the end of the show, he was the only one in his class to fail flight school. I think David told Marion he loved her, but she didn't see receptive - but she did get jealous of a female flight student.<p>That's all I recall. Write back if you have specific questions.

Each fall, we have a big book festival in Nashville. The Southern Festival of Books. about 18 months ago, the third of the Dinotopia picture boooks came out and my son who was then 7 fell in love with it. Of all the books available, Dinotopia: First Flight was the one he wanted. So, we got it. And we went to hear James Gurney talk about the books and he said they were working on a movie or a miniseries. Later, he signed s's book. Sone wanted a drawing in it too and Gurney did it. The book is literally worn out now. <p>After Gurney finished his talk, he opened the floor to questions and my chicken son actually, in a group of strangers, asked a question. A good question. On one page Will Dennison or another character is shown flying on the back of one of the skybaxes and on the next page he is on a different one. S wanted to know what happened. Gurney seemed impressed at this little boy's attention to such detail. <p>Anyway, s was so disappointed that our vcr did not record Monday's episode while we were gone. A power outage had knocked out the programming. But, either my x or his father, did record the show. So we can get it. <p>I'm not impressed by the acting, myself. The effects are pretty good for television. Gurney used a lot of ancient Asian Indian architecture for his inspiration for the buildings in the books. He lives in a small town and uses a lot of local people for the characters drawn in the books. The illustrations are wonderful. Worth the price of the books, for sure. You can even get collector's prints (for framing to hang on walls) of some of the illustrations.