The Future Is Wild

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The Future is Wild is a 2002 BBC miniseries remade as a 2007-2008 animated series, focused on the possibility of how life would evolve in the future, focusing entirely on three distinct eras: 5 million, 100 million and 200 million years into the future. The 2002 series had a book co-written by Dougal Dixon (who also wrote After Man: A Zoology of The Future) released with it.

The 2002 series was aired in North America by Animal Planet, being a Canadian/European co-production. Eventually, it became popular enough to spawn a children's series; being made entirely in Canada, it lacked the accurate models of the documentary and added cartoonish animal CGI models and human characters whose models are deeply disturbing. You may like it, but there's no doubts that it's weird that a serious franchise went to the mediocre side of the Animation Age Ghetto.

Tropes used in The Future Is Wild include:
  • After the End: The premise of the documentary is how life will evolve millions of years after humans are gone.
  • Animal Talk: In the children's series all animals (even absent brained invertebrates like jellyfish and sea spiders) are capable of sentience and speak a language of their own (which can be understood by all species apparently).
  • Apocalypse How: Class 3. It's left unexplained how this occurred.
  • Bat Out of Hell: The Deathgleaner; for some reason afterwards, bats disappear alongside other mammals, despite how adaptable they and other species like rodents are.
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: Silver spiders, falconflies, slickribbons... hell, the future seems to be especially wild for invertebrates
  • Big Damn Heroes: The squibbons rescue one of their young from a megasquid. It actually plays out like a Saturday Morning Cartoon.
  • Bioluminescence Is Cool
  • Carnivore Confusion: In the children's series, every single animal is sentient; as a result, carnivores are portrayed as villains, ranging from genuine Affably Evil examples into at least one full fledged evil Complete Monster without a mind of its own. I hope PETA isn't behind this...
    • Averted in documentary, however, where many carnivores are portrayed sympathetically
    • Averted twice: a carakiller was portrayed as sympathetic in "Monkey Brains" and Gill and Butch, the lurkfish, are just hilarious.
  • Comically Missing the Point: In the TV series, from Sign Of The Time Flyer:

Ethan: We could run around in the grass and play Marco Polo.
C.G.: You want to pretend to be the 13th century explorer who journeyed to China?

  • Crippling Overspecialization: This causes some species to go extinct
  • Everything's Even Worse with Sharks: 200 MY in the future and they are still there!
  • Everythings Messier With Pigs: The Scrofa are descended from European wild boars. Subverted in that they are not at all filthy. However, they can be quite violent when defending themselves
  • Everything's Squishier with Cephalopods: The Swampus, Rainbow Squid, Megasquid and Squibbon.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Gannetwhale, Lurkfish, Rainbow Squid, Snowstalker, and so on.
  • Expy: Many creatures are expies of other animal species, both living and extinct, since they all fill similar ecological niches, and were subject to convergent evolution.
    • Snowstalker: Sabertooth
    • Toraton: Sauropod
    • Squibbon: Ape
    • Rainbow Squid: Giant Squid
    • Carakiller: Terror Bird/Dromaeosaurid
    • Rattleback: Pangolin
    • Shagrat: Musk Ox.
    • Gannetwhale: Seal
    • Cryptile Lizard: Frilled lizard
    • Megasquid: Elephant
    • Spink: Naked Mole Rat
    • Lurkfish: Electric Eel (it resembles a Monkfish, though)
    • Babookari: Baboon
    • Terabyte: Termite
    • Sharkopath: Shark (duh)
    • Deathgleaner: Desert hawk
    • Silver Swimmer: Fish
    • Flish: Birds.
    • Also, there are a lot of expys from After Man: A Zoology of The Future.
      • Snow Stalker: Bardelot
      • Shagrat: Woolly Gigantelope
      • Gannetwhale: Vortex and Porpin
      • Cryptile: Fin lizard
      • Gryken: Pamthret
      • Scrofa: Zarander and Turmi
      • Spink: Termite Burrower
  • Feathered Fiend: The Carakiller. Also, while only trying to defend themselves, both the Gannetwhale and the Spitfire have very lethal defense mechanisms.
  • Flying Seafood Special: The two species of flish. Most people would assume a flying fish would evolve from modern gliding species (or at least any pelagic one), but the makers decided to make it a codfish descendent, and mind you that codfish are among the least likely candidates to develop flight.
  • Friend to All Living Things: Emily from the children's series.
  • Giant Flyer: The Great Blue Windrunner. The sources don't seem to agree on its size; some offer a realistic approach at 3 meters (about the same size as the largest modern flying birds), but the official site states a wingspan of 15 meters, which would make flight impossible given how thin the atmosphere is at the altitudes it flies at and how narrow its wings are (though it can increase the wing area by raising its legs, which have wing feathers).
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: the creatures in the kids show are mainly voiced by Canadian Voice acting veterans, including Stephanie Beard.
  • Humanity's Wake: The British version of the documentary was after humanity went extinct, the American version changed it so that the human race simply left the system.
  • Killer Rabbit: The Snowstalker, the Spitfire Bird, and the Gryken
  • Light Is Not Good: The Sharkopaths, whose yellow bioluminescence fits them well. Also, one of the main problems for life in the high plateau is ultraviolet radiation, and thus both the Windrunner and the Silver Spider reflect it, looking as if glowing in blue and silver light respectively.
  • Loads And Loads Of Hypothetical Creatures
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Some animals have names that are scary.
    • Sharkopath
    • Carakiller
    • Deathgleaner
  • No Flow in CGI: This common problem was the other reason for showing so few mammals, and having them die out in the end. Hair is hard to animate!
  • Portmanteau: Boy, does this series ever love them. We have Babookaris, Bumblebeetles, Carakillers, Sharkopaths and Squibbons, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
  • Psycho Electric Eel: The Lurkfish
  • Punny Name: Sharkopath, Squibbon, Carakiller, Bumblebeetle, Baboukari, Swampuss, Flish.
  • Rodents of Unusual Size: The shagrats and rattlebacks.
  • Shock and Awe: The Lurkfish
  • Speculative Documentary Of Lies
  • Stock Sound Effect: Bear cub cries for the young Snowstalkers.
  • Totally Radical: In the children's series, the Antarctic Forest is described as 'trippy'. Uh, that's not really what trippy means...
  • Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Literally. The Gannetwhales regurgitate and spit their last meal at possible predators while they are incubating their eggs at the shore.
  • Wham! Line: "Adult toraton."
    • To explain, the toraton is introduced as an elephant-sized herbivore descended from tortoises. It is then killed by a swampus. We then find out that it was only a baby. Adult toraton are the largest land animals ever, and have no predators.
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