Too much of everything

Perfect cast and a good story

Disturbing yet enthralling

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

I like TV documentaries just as much as the next person, and I do get novelty value out of the mostly awful SyFy resume. But I didn't get any value whatsoever from 2012: Startling New Secrets. The main problem was that I just didn't find it interesting. SyFy are notorious not only for being cheap but also seemingly never putting any scientific or geographical research. If you are used to that from other stuff they've done, you won't be disappointed here. Here we are told (and these are just examples) we are descendants of Martians, are capable of space travel from Mars to Earth, that we build primitive buildings and that we do human sacrifices to appease the gods. Sorry, but while not all the stuff presented is entirely impossible(even that is speculative) I just had a hard time believing it. How it was presented was also part of the problem, instead of thoughtful delivery that provoked questions and thinking, it treats the information as proved fact and seems conceited with it. The information itself is also repetitive(how many times in this programme is "2012" repeated?), there is the use of very emotionally forced and almost creepy footage especially the man and the child(the child's facial expressions spoke volumes) and the inclusion of Roland Emmerich seemed little more than an excuse to promote his latest film(the mediocre at best 2012). What made it further uninteresting was the pace, which throughout is sluggish and dull. Visually, 2012: Startling New Secrets fares little better, the scenery looks duller than it probably was and the camera work and editing seemed haphazard in alternative to focused. Overall, don't recommend this at all, it was lazy, repetitive, dull and unbelievable, everything a documentary shouldn't be. 1/10 Bethany Cox

I've just watched this so called scientific documentary and I'm telling you it's a complete waste of time, they brought these so called scientists to convince us that 2012 is the year the world ends.Cheap tricks and what I liked the most was this so called Richard Hoagland who claimed that humans came originally from Mars, not to mention his gadget that gave immense fluctuations once entering the Izapa ruins by which he proved a "non existent" Torsion Field Physics.There is also this Geryl guy supposedly an astronomer, seemed like he was narrating a horror movie when he tried to explain the 2012 implications.Producing such lame documentaries never seizes to amaze me, If you want to waste your time, then this surely fits the bill, go watch the 2012 movie, at least you know that it's science fiction.

Bad science, cheap book plugs, and sad money grabs abound in this most pseudo of pseudo science documentaries by the "SyFy" Network (The really have taken the sci out, haven't they?) They interview pseudo scientists and fools across the world, searching through the piles of misinformation and misinterpretation that surround the world of Doomsday predictors. Truthfully, 2012 is NOT a reoccurring date in the doomsday myths around the world, just like the year 2000 is not "predicted in the bible" (got a chuckle every time Jack Van Impe spouted that one). But never let good sense stop insane fools, as the SyFy Channel gives every prominent crank their day in the sun. Then there's the creepy footage of a pudgy, sweaty man who plans to build a massive underground bunker where he and dozens of others plan to convert a missile silo into a super bunker. You shake your head and bit your lip when the man picks up his kid and claims that this is the reason he's trying to become a paranoid mole man. I almost dialed social services when the child looked over at her dad, frozen with an odd fear. Yeah kid, that's right, your Dad's a nut job and you are gonna need therapy.The best part? Richard C. Hoagland, a non-scientist who achieved sci fi notoriety in the early part of the 90s by advertising pure madness and paranoia over and over again on the old Sci-Fi Network (the bad old days, pre-Farscape, when all they showed was Lost in Space). Hoagland has conjured up a magical science called Torsion Field Physics (don't reach for your textbook, it's not in there.) He claimed that this is the stuff that the US Government has been using to predict the end of the world. He then PROVES his theory using an out of date kinetic battery watch. Thankfully the producers include a short sound bite from one of the editor of Skeptic magazine who, in one ten second sound bite, calls all of these fools out with real science.All of this is slipped in between subtle references to the 2012 movie that opens soon. Basically...THEY'RE CONVINCING PEOPLE THAT THE WORLD IS ENDING TO SELL A MOVIE DIRECTED BY THE GUY WHO REMADE GODZILLA! Yeah, Marketing people have no soul.