Full Circle - with Dinosaurs

Hello! In about a week from me writing this, the 2025 revival of Walking with Dinosaurs will hit screens. I have had the great joy of working on this series for the past almost-three years, and I can’t believe the world is about to see it. With this, I thought it would be a fun exercise to look back on the first time I encountered the original series, back when I was little. 

About 24 years ago, my parents took me to a market. They wanted to get some VCDs (this was in that nebulous period between VHS tapes and DVDs) for movie night. My folks weren’t film-buffs by any means, but they had a fairly big collection of titles, all kept safe in little transparent sleeves in a black binder. I used to flick through that binder all the time when they weren’t home. They had a fondness for movies about natural disasters and big ol’ animals - the likes of Jaws (1975), Anaconda (1997), and Lake Placid (1999). Being, like, 5, I was very much enthralled by the idea of a big ol’ animal - so anytime my parents wanted to flip through the catalogue of films at the local shops, I was on board.

For a bit of context, this was in Malaysia - I grew up in the suburbs outside Kuala Lumpur - where, at the time, getting a hold of legitimate copies of any media was surprisingly difficult. The vast majority of outlets carried a variety of bootleg copies ranging in quality from perfectly watchable to mistranslated, glitchy messes, so it was always a bit of a toss up when buying a movie or boxset.

Side note: don’t even get me started on the state of computer games back then. So often I came home with a Zoo Tycoon 2 expansion disc, shaking with excitement to finally be able to have an African Spurred Tortoise in my poorly planned out wildlife park, only to be absolutely emotionally destroyed by the disc not working. The pain remains to this day.

Anyways, that specific evening, I recall standing in front of the display next to my dad as he flipped through the various movies on offer. I was a tiny kid, and my eyes could just barely peek over the top of the stand. I had to really reach up to be able to pick through the selection, and even then, my fingers struggled to close around any of the plastic-wrapped squares. 

As I browsed (as best I could), something caught my eye. With mild difficulty, I pulled out one of the sleeves. On the front was an blurry, grainy cover image. As far as I can remember, it was a giant pterosaur, grey with a bright beak, against a blue sky background. Above (or below?) it was the title: Walking with Dinosaurs.

I must have been beyond excited with my discovery, because the next thing I remember was taking that disc and toddling right out of the shopfront, to show the rest of my family, who were perusing other stalls. I clearly did not understand the concept of commerce (again, I was, like, 5), and so was shepherded very urgently back to the shop by my mother, who was very apologetic to the shopkeeper (who I recall not being very happy about this tiny child attempting to very brazenly burgle them). No idea what my dad was doing during all this. Either way, after all that, I assume my parents felt they couldn’t really get away without buying the thing. And so that night, I sat in the backseat of the car as we made our way home, staring at the back of the package, desperately trying to make out the detail of the low resolution pictures of various prehistoric creatures under the orange light of the passing streetlamps. 

Remember what I was saying about bootleg media being fairly prevalent in late 90s/early 2000s Malaysia? I did a cursory search online and apparently my home country was one of the biggest bootleg media producers globally at the time. So it’s perhaps not particularly surprising that the Walking with Dinosaurs copy I had was not as complete as one would expect. In fact, out of the 6 25-minute-long episodes, only the fourth, Giant of the Skies, was actually on the disc - along with the 45-minute ‘Making Of’ special. 

I watched every second of it religiously.

It is hard to pinpoint specific points in my life that were well and truly formative. This, however, was one that I can confidently say was genuinely pivotal. Seeing the old Ornithocheirus take to the wing for his final, epic journey across the world was one thing, but watching this group of tremendously dedicated people work to bring these long gone animals back to life was something else entirely. I could go on about why this was so important, and I very much will in another post, but I think this story is more of a how than a why.

So I was hooked. Like, permanently, hooked. I desperately asked my parents over and over to get me literally any sort of dinosaur media they could find. Not the easiest thing to do in early 2000s Malaysia, but my mother was determined to foster this budding love for science. She came home with more and more dinosaur documentaries (and books, and magazines - another story for another time), from the popular to the obscure. I even remember the first time she brought home our first DVD (so futuristic!), and it was two When Dinosaurs Ruled (1999) specials. Can you imagine how blown away I was by seeing an interactive menu on screen? Anyways, that DVD didn’t work for more than a day or so. I think I watched maybe 10 minutes of it? Regardless, I was not deterred on my quest. 

A quick note of appreciation for my parents. I was a weird kid, and difficult to appease. I couldn’t get enough of anything prehistoric, and despite how hard it was, they still made every effort to get a hold of anything that would feed that interest. It made all the difference I think, and I am grateful for their patience. 

Back to Walking with Dinosaurs.  I was obviously obsessed with that one episode I had, but I knew there was more out there and I wanted nothing more than to get my hands on the rest of it. I have a vague memory of watching some of the other episodes in the years following, but I can’t recall how. Maybe we found another VCD copy, or maybe it did end up on broadcast TV in Malaysia? I definitely recall doodling that Liopleurodon from the Cruel Sea episode sitting in my dad’s office when I was 7 or 8. 

So, my mother eventually found this (in I suspect 2007?), and I must have been over the moon when she did. Behold, the Big Dinosaur Box. I recently visited my family in Malaysia for the first time in a few years, and I had to take some photos for posterity. This version was likely made for distribution in China, and had found its way to Malaysia somehow. This was my most prized posession as a child, and I watched them all repeatedly. It was like craving crumbs for years and then being handed a three course meal. Not only this, I came into the possession of Walking with Beasts not long after. I never did get a hold of Walking with Monsters, but I wasn’t complaining. Or maybe I did. I was 12, give me a break. 

And that’s how it all began. This was initially meant to be more of a dive into why these films were so influential in my life, kickstarting my love of science, nature, and storytelling, but it became more of a discussion about the bootleg media landscape of early 2000s Malaysia and how hard it was to find dinosaur media in particular, and about how grateful I am that my folks picked up on the fact that my dinosaur obsession wasn’t destined to stay a childhood one. There are so many individual moments that led to me being where I am today, and it is mind-boggling to think that had I not stumbled across that first bootleg VCD, my life might have taken any number of other paths. All those pivotal points, accumulating since 1996, leading me to my present. Where, despite all odds, I have gotten to work on a revival of the very series that started me on this road. Full circle.