What if extinction didn't have to be forever? That's the premise of this BCI Eclipse docu-drama by the animatronics and computer graphics teams of Walking With Dinosaurs in which naturalist Nigel Marven rescues now-extinct creatures from the past 300-million years and brings them via time portal to a present-day wildlife sanctuary known as Prehistoric Park to be studied, preserved, and bred. Like a Jurassic Park with much more scientific information and minus the high level of sheer terror, Prehistoric Park deals with the housing of prehistoric creatures in the modern world. Nigel travels through the last 300-million years collecting specimens of everything from the heavily researched tyrannosaurus rex, wooly mammoth, and saber tooth cat to the newly discovered four-winged microraptor and the centipede-like arthropleura. Each episode skillfully blends scientific fact with scientific inference and Nigel's demonstrated knowledge of modern day animals and his ability to extrapolate that knowledge to understand prehistoric animal behavior and their needs is impressive. At Prehistoric Park, the very knowledgeable veterinarian Suzanne is similarly adept at adapting current medical knowledge and practice to help the prehistoric animals under her care and park caretaker Bob is a master improviser, building containment pens and modifying environments, and sometimes animal behavior, to ensure a healthy and safe captivity. An adventure series in the truest sense, each 47-minute episode juxtaposes the modern with the prehistoric and the scientific with the imagined, is full of suspense and drama, and features an amazing combination of very skilled computer animation and realistic animatronics that leave audiences believing that they've just seen genuine footage of prehistoric creatures. Scenic locations are stunning and conjure up localities ranging from the subtropical prehistoric park to the icy tundra, rock formations of Scotland, and ash-strewn volcanic lands of prehistoric China. The talents of Nigel Marven, sometimes compared to the Crocodile Hunter, Suzanne McNabb, Rod Arthur (park keeper Bob), and narrator David Jason are considerable. Bonus features include a great "Stats and Facts" feature which allows viewers to select on-screen facts about specific creatures as they appear within the episodes, storyboards, photo gallery, and a 27-minute making-of featurette that details the entire creative process from imagining the impossible to scouting locations, creating the incredible animatronics with "Crawlie Creatures" and cutting-edge computer animation with "Framestore," and finding talented actors and natural history experts up to the challenge of re-creating 300-million years of history. This six-episode television adventure is at once entertaining and educational and is sure to fascinate and inspire the entire family ages 6 and older. --Tami Horiuchi