Concept and creative process
A series looking at how the BBC has revealed and interpreted monumental moments in our history. Using the BBC archive, the programmes examined changes in research covered in documentary television. Joanna Ball (now Lane) interpreted the series title through a sundial, which registered the passage of time in a sequence of rapid dissolves of the shadow cast by the gnomon, during a camera move from close-up to a view of the whole face engraved with the programme title. As the camera came to rest, the shadow cast by a pterodactyl flew across the sundial surface, metamorphosing midway through its flight into the shadow of Concorde, the supersonic passenger airliner.