BEAST LEGENDS: Kraken

SyFy - Original Air Date: 9/9/10

The ads led me to believe that this was going to be some kind of serious investigation of mythical/legendary beasts, and I guess, in some ways, it is. I thought, though, that it would be a "Wow can these beasts be real?" show, or "What is the reality behind the myth?"  In that, I was completely mistaken.  This show, if the premier episode is any indication, rather, takes the reported mythical properties of such beasts, compares them to reality, and then uses those "statistics" to create a CGI version of the beast.  Yeah, it's recreating the monsters in CG, not investigating where the myths came from.  So, at the end we get a pretty cool monster, but no real "meat" whatsoever. And the Kraken they came up with this week was pretty cool.  And they stuff they did to recreate it, seeing real squids, climbing ship's masts, were pretty cool, too.  But, in the end, it seems to me that this show may be mostly of a "tryout" show for future SyFy CGI monster movies.  (And if they need writers for those movies, sign me up.)  It is not a paranormal investigation show.  If you like CGI monsters and just a tad of history/science, tune in.  But if you were expecting SyFy's answer to MonsterQuest, give it a pass.