That series was a historical drama, not a documentary. Ulana Khomyuk, the woman speaking at the start of that video, didn’t even exist. As acknowledged in the series itself, she was a composite of several Soviet scientists for narrative purposes.
It’s not misleading to take artistic liberties in a work of fiction designed to entertain, even if based on true events. That would be damming for a documentary, but this was not one.
Pretty much any biopic or historical documentary struggles with the tension between the realities that, on the one hand, they can't completely make up everything out of whole cloth and, on the other, the writers don't want to let facts get too much in the way of a good story.
But some number of people get POd when not everything is literally true.
A related thing I 'learnt' (or rather 'realised' having not thitherto thought about) via Fargo was that 'true story' are just words you can say, they don't mean anything and there's no regulatory oversight or whatever.
The showrunners agonized over making the show historically accurate vs fitting the story into a TV format. It sounds like they traded the minor details to get the broad brushstrokes right - and especially dissect the themes around hubris, willful ignorance, and so on. The 'making of' podcast where they discuss this is quite interesting:
He seems to be completely missing the distinction between what might be said in a meeting with high ranking politicians and what you might write in a nuclear physics exam. It's not unreasonable for someone to greatly exaggerate, talk confidently about stuff they're actually very unsure about and even straight up lie in such a situation.
I understand calling him pompous, or an ass, and he had that period where he basically was a part of gamergate for a minute (maybe he still believes those kinds of things, I'm not in his head). He definitely will take a "debunking" that should take two minutes of math, and spends 20 minutes basically reveling in "just how wrong" the supposed Bad Man is.
But when has he been wrong, in a way that would cause you to call his credibility "dubious"? When has he called out an Infinite energy machine, or a "pull water out of the air in a desert" machine, or an Elon project, and been wrong?
This is why I bounce hard off of anything that could be labelled "historical fiction".
I don't know enough about, e.g., the JFK assassination, to be sure that a dramatization of it isn't going to fill in the gaps and make me think I do know something that turns out to be serving the agenda of others, or simply wrong.
And yes I recognize that "history" is just the consensus version of "historical fiction", and that consensus is local at best, and often also serving an agenda!
latexr|2 years ago
It’s not misleading to take artistic liberties in a work of fiction designed to entertain, even if based on true events. That would be damming for a documentary, but this was not one.
ghaff|2 years ago
But some number of people get POd when not everything is literally true.
OJFord|2 years ago
finfrastrcuture|2 years ago
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-chernobyl-podcast/...
dagw|2 years ago
Workaccount2|2 years ago
It's sort of like, once you make a name for yourself by pointing out what is wrong, suddenly everything becomes wrong.
mrguyorama|2 years ago
But when has he been wrong, in a way that would cause you to call his credibility "dubious"? When has he called out an Infinite energy machine, or a "pull water out of the air in a desert" machine, or an Elon project, and been wrong?
OJFord|2 years ago
ChrisMarshallNY|2 years ago
quesera|2 years ago
I don't know enough about, e.g., the JFK assassination, to be sure that a dramatization of it isn't going to fill in the gaps and make me think I do know something that turns out to be serving the agenda of others, or simply wrong.
And yes I recognize that "history" is just the consensus version of "historical fiction", and that consensus is local at best, and often also serving an agenda!