I recently picked up all the episodes of Sagan's series, which impressed me greatly when I first watched it in my early 20s. This time, twenty-seven years later, I am more than impressed. I am overwhelmed. Sagan is immensely intelligent, yet like all good teachers, he makes his intelligence accessible to all. Sagan's series is an example of how TV can be. The new release includes appendices after some of the episodes, recorded ten years later, in which Sagan, showing signs of the cancer that would kill him in three short years, adds new information without changing anything from the original episode. The man was so prescient, using terms like global warming and intelligent design, before they had entered our collective consciousness. Cosmos satisfies those interested in astronomy, life sciences, history, philosophy, sociology -- so wide is the breadth of topics it covers. It is something all of us should have in our DVD libraries.
