Sooner or later, if youre making a TV show about science, youre going to have to deal with the dreaded E-word.

More than 150 years after Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species," evolution remains a cornerstone of modern science as well as a lightning rod for controversy, particularly among the religiously devout. The pilot episode of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey," which aired last week, only briefly alluded to evolution (although even that was sufficient to spark rumors of censorship when a local Fox affiliate in Oklahoma cut into that segment to run a station promo, purportedly because of an operator error).

The opening for this weeks "Cosmos" episode ("Some of the Things That Molecules Do") wades right into those treacherous waters to explore the common ancestry of every living thing on Earth. Or rather, it dips its toe gingerly into those treacherous waters. You know, just to test things out a bit before plunging in.

PHOTOS: TV shows and their spinoffs

This is the story about you and me and your dog, our host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, purrs reassuringly from his perch by a cozy campfire in the woods. What could be less intellectually threatening than mans best friend? The conceit is a little hokey, especially when Tyson makes a show of waving a flaming torch at encroaching wolves to hold them at bay.

But it provides a neat segue into the domestication of canines: dogs evolved from wolves that self-selected for tameness over many generations Survival of the Friendliest. And eventually human beings began breeding only those dogs with the most desirable qualities: artificial selection instead of natural selection. We took evolution into our own hands, Tyson says.

Oh yes, he uses the E word, like it aint no thing because it isnt. The scientific evidence for evolutionary theory is overwhelming, after all, and Tyson is ready to show us just how this process works at the molecular level, via some nifty animations of DNA. We see twin strands being split and replicated as cells divide, a process that usually runs smoothly, although occasionally there are errors tiny mutations, often inconsequential. But sometimes they can, say, alter the color of a bears fur, and you get a bear with white instead of brown fur. In an icy environment, that confers a survival advantage in the form of better camouflage; its easier for a bear with white fur to sneak up on prey. So nature selects for white fur and that mutation gets passed down through subsequent generations. And voila! You have polar bears.

PHOTOS: WGAs top 101 shows

The episode deftly covers the basics of the Tree of Life, in which each twig represents a different species, with those most closely related on the same or nearby branches, and the trunk represents the common ancestry of all life on Earth. We grapple with the evolution of the eye, the marvelously complex result of random mutations over millions of years. No need to invoke an intelligent designer, Tyson assures us. Natural selection has got this covered too.

But evolution doesnt easily adapt to sudden, catastrophic events, evidenced by the five mass extinctions that wiped out so many earlier species on Earth. Tyson focuses on the end of the Permian Era, when massive volcanic eruptions wiped out the trilobites.

Visit link:
'Cosmos' recap: Wading into the tide pools of evolution