Star Stuff: An Exploratory Case Study of the Cosmos Television Franchise

A New Cosmos series with Neil deGrasse and Seth MacFarlane

You have just emerged in the section of this project devoted to the new Cosmos series with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Seth MacFarlane. 2010 marked a critical shift in the United States’ approach to space exploration under the administration of President Barack Obama. On April 15th, 2010, President Obama announced that he would allow private industry to supply services to NASA on a contractual basis. The announcement was made in a speech at the Kennedy Space Center. This change in policy opened the door for SpaceX to make trips to the International Space Station on behalf of NASA later in the decade. I have isolated 8 minutes of the speech that specifically focus on private space exploration below. 
While these changes at NASA were unfolding, Ann Druyan’s focus was on creating a new Cosmos series with Neil deGrasse Tyson as the host. However, the project didn’t get off the ground until Seth MacFarlane got on board as a producer. Here is an article by the New York Times from August 5th, 2011, announcing MacFarlane’s involvement in the show.

Cosmos was not new territory for MacFarlane. His fandom for the original series had already materialized as a skit that was aired on March 4th, 2007, in Season 5 Episode 12 of Family Guy. On November 12, 2013, he would take things a step further by funding the opening of the Seth MacFarlane Collection of Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan in the Library of Congress archives. The online portion of this archive has been of great value to me while creating this project and several of its items appear throughout these sections. Here is a post on the Library of Congress website announcing the opening.
As the 2014 release of Cosmos a spacetime Odyssey approached, Tyson, MacFarlane and Druyan began to take to make media appearances in promotion of the show. Here’s 10 minutes of an interview with Tyson from January 16th, 2014, on the PBS show Overheard with Evan Smith. Topics in this interview include ongoing public interest in the Cosmos, the positioning of the show as a sequel rather than a remake. The reason it is on Fox and not PBS, how Tyson planned to host the show differently compared to Sagan, and why the Cosmos series has continued to endure.
Tyson’s knowledge of the Cosmos series and Carl Sagan did not begin with his involvement in the Planetary Society. He first visited Sagan’s laboratory in Cornell University while he was still a High School student. There encountered that day is recounted in the first episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Sagan’s letter inviting him to visit Cornell has been digitized in the Seth MacFarlane collection, which you can now view below.

Though Tyson would not accept his offer to attend Cornell and work on the Viking space probes, their relationship continued to endure in the decades that followed. When the first episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey aired on March 9th, 2014, it featured a 30 second introduction by President Obama. Here is a 3-and-a-half-minute trailer showcasing the tone of this new series, as well as its emphasis on cutting edge CGI effects and animated sequences provided by MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door Productions.
After the show’s premiere, Druyan, Tyson, and MacFarlane appeared in a Q&A session live streamed by Fox. Here is an 8-minute clip from that Q&A discussing what they are most excited to communicate in the new series, why they chose to put the show on Fox over other networks, and how they straddled the line between education and entertainment. 

Almost four years after the release of Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey, a new second season titled Cosmos: Possible Worlds was announced on January 13th, 2018. The new series was set to air in spring 2019 on Fox and National Geographic channels once again. This section would be launching into a radically different political climate under the administration of President Donald Trump. In fact, six months after the announcement of this new season, President Trump would make one of the biggest outer space related announcements of his presidency. A new division of the US military known as the Space Force. If you would like to watch the speech, I’ve included all 11 minutes of it that specifically discuss the Space Force below. 
Production on Cosmos: Possible Worlds would continue throughout the rest of 2018. However, Fox announced that it was investigating sexual misconduct allegations against Tyson in November and would ultimately postpone its March 3rd, 2019, premiere date for the show. These allegations came from three different women. One was a former assistant that said she had to leave her job due to sexual harassment. Another was a physics and astronomy professor that reported being groped by Tyson at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in 2009. A third was a former classmate at the University of Texas who accused Tyson of raping her in the 1980s. On March 15th, 2019, Fox announced that it had concluded its investigation and would allow Cosmos: Possible Worlds to air. Here’s an article from The Hollywood Reporter released that day discussing the announcement and the allegations against Tyson. 
Five days after that announcement, the Walt Disney Corporation would close a deal to purchase the 21st Century Fox catalog in a massive $71.3 billion merger. Thus, this made the new season of Cosmos a Walt Disney production.

Cosmos: Possible Worlds would not make its debut until a year later on March 3rd, 2020. It would be accompanied by a companion book of the same name written by Druyan. This book included all the same content as the show, but with added passages from Druyan discussing her work with Sagan, their marriage, and other reflections grounded in her personal lived experiences. These passages really helped me to better understand her and Sagan’s life behind the scenes and I have included quotes from the book on a couple of occasions in this project. To conclude this section on the new Cosmos series with Tyson and MacFarlane. I will leave you with a 2-minute trailer for Cosmos: Possible Worlds. After which, you may continue to my short essay titled Who Owns (the) Cosmos by clicking the blue button at the bottom of your screen. You can also select another section you are interested in by returning to the homepage or using the drop-down menu at the top of your screen.

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