We know the end of the story. We know that most - nearly all - dinosaurs perished 66 million years ago. The beaked birds flapping and screeching around us today are the only dinosaurs left. The conclusion could only come as a shock to a literal dinosaur under a rock. No wonder the Episode 4 finale of The Dinosaurs brings in the swelling strings, the panoramic views, and catastrophic views fit for a mid-90s disaster film.

It’s a little funny to have literally written the book on the K/Pg extinction and see some cues potentially borrowed from my narrative. It wouldn’t be the first time. And it’s not like I can claim the real story’s my own. (If I had my way, the non-avian dinosaurs would have lived.) But the common introduction to both The Last Days of the Dinosaurs and The Dinosaurs only highlights where the narratives depart. In the case of the Netflix show, the previous three episodes have been insistence on dominance only to set up a crushing downfall.

Now, simply in terms of visuals and story elements, there’s a great deal of E4 that still catches the eye. I loved that the show almost becomes self-aware, claiming its about to introduce us to North America’s answer to Spinosaurus only to reveal a small, waddling toothed bird, Hesperornis, even though we’re soon back to nature red in tooth and claw with a MEG 2 conclusion. The Ankylosaurus vs Tyrannosaurus fight is also tense, its dark, thunderstorm setting owing more than a little to suspense of Phil Tippett’s iconic Prehistoric Beast. And, of course, we get more nesting behaviors, a reminder that many dinosaurs not only laid clutches of eggs but looked after their offspring for a time. Silly as the victory of T. rex over Ankylosaurus is, delivering a decisive headbutt due to “intelligence” as the gravelly and never-should-have-been-cast Freeman intones, at least the bloated Ankylosaurus acts as a transition to the nest and the point that predators eat as part of ecosystems and not simply bloodthirsty monsters. The final sequence, directly comparing stock footage of modern birds with the show’s dinosaurs, does an admirable job of highlighting similarities between living and extinct dinosaurs - how the study of one helps us understand the other.

But the show’s continued obsession with dominance just feels thin and silly at the end, with almost no recognition that other living things even existed at the end of the Cretaceous.

We all know dinosaurs are the stars. The second Jurassic Dinosaur rush against the background of American museum-building? It was centered around finding, excavating, and reconstructing dinosaurs to draw in the public. Of course the science of paleontology benefited, but dinosaurs were the blockbuster creatures that would coax visitors into fossil halls where the fossil mammals, perhaps, would impart lessons about evolution and distortions about natural hierarchy. Nevertheless, the only non-dinosaurs in the fourth episode to get a prominent mention are large mosasaurs and pterosaurs - cast as threats to dinosaurs and their dominance.

“The dinosaurs’ dominance here is unrivaled,” “The dinosaurs are now so dominant, nothing on Earth can stand in their way,” and it goes on like this, the same as the very beginning. Even the individual lives of the dinosaurs are locked in this reptilian colonialist project, the show’s unfortunate Ankylosaurus introduced to us as on patrol for intruders as if he were a mall cop. The headgear of marginocephalian dinosaurs - the horned dinosaurs, such as the dome-headed Pachycephalosaurus and three-horned celebrity Triceratops - are likewise cast as weapons against predators in an endless arms race, when we know these bizarre structures were more relevant for communication and contests within the herbivore species (much like the armor of Ankylosaurus). The show’s insistence that dinosaurs ruled and were shaped by tearing at each other’s throats remains in place, and so the finale felt like I was watching someone make their dinosaur toys attack each other.

The program itself defends the science, citing discussions over feather color and a few behavioral points. But while the series wouldn’t be the first to be guilty of this, I wonder what the effect of highlighting only the intense, the dramatic, and the most unusual cases does for the public’s perceptions of dinosaurs. It’s difficult to imagine a circumstance where an adult T. rex would hunt an equally-large Ankylosaurus just as lions only seldomly go after adult elephants - something that is technically feasible but comes across as just another weeknight dinner for a dinosaur heralded as the most powerful and important of all. It’s all drama, all battle, making dinosaurs seem nearly alien in their ferocity and endless fighting.

It’s a missed opportunity for a program that’s meant to be a science show. (We have eight Jurassic Park films and their derivatives if roaring entertainment is what’s desired instead.) The Dinosaurs makes no real attempt to show us how dinosaurs shaped their world and were shaped by it in turn. Instead it is as if they suddenly appeared in the Triassic, fought to be prolific, and were only laid low by cosmic bad luck. It makes dinosaurs seem like a product of a singular and violent time in Earth’s history rather than animals, much like animals we see around us today, that can tell us something about the past of our own ancestors. Indeed, Mesozoic mammals have no real role to play in The Dinosaurs, meaning audiences are never invited to consider how life among the dinosaurs might have molded who we are today.

Even a single line that the asteroid impact eliminated around 75% of known species, or affected ecosystems from the deep sea to the haunts of T. rex, would have provided some view of the terrible lizards within Earth’s broader story. Instead, a viewer could walk away with the idea that Earth is more or less the same now as it was 66 million years ago, all other life simply acting as setting for the big, roaring reptiles. Because, of course, the show’s conclusion emphasizes that dinosaurs got “bigger, stronger, and even more formidable” over time - when the true measure of their success is that they thrived at every size, from raven to 100-foot-plus giants, changing and reinventing themselves constantly over an immense span of time.

In the end, I’m sorry to say, I could have done without The Dinosaurs. The program has some gorgeous cinematography, a few ideas shine against the background, such as busy little Heterodontosaurus and the top view of Hesperornis fleeing a mosasaur over the reefs, but the show is so overwrought in its insistence that dinosaurs dominated that it doesn’t have much to offer compared to other contemporary series like Prehistoric Planet and the revival of Walking With Dinosaurs.

Speaking of, it wouldn’t be fair to view The Dinosaurs in isolation. I’ve been late getting to the new Walking With Dinosaurs and I’m curious how the new run compares to the 2000 epic that even had one of my high school history teachers wheeling in the TV cart because the documentary was a must-see.

Next week, let’s walk with dinosaurs.